


Frankenstein Complex

by sybaritick



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ex Machina (2015), Badass Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Bottom Gavin Reed, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Dubious Everything because it's Kamski, Dubious Morality, Eventual Smut, Gavin Reed Redemption, Height Differences, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Games, Narrowly Avoided Cannibalism but don't worry no one gets eaten, Possessive Behavior, Power Imbalance, Psychological Horror, Suicidal Thoughts, Top Upgraded Connor | RK900, Unhealthy Relationships, actually I'm even happier if it's both, either you'll find this unnerving or some part of you will be into it and I'm happy either way, the universe conspires to make Gavin Reed feel like he's trapped in a horror movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 17:54:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15712152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybaritick/pseuds/sybaritick
Summary: “If you were unable to feel them, Detective Reed, simulating emotions would be enormously beneficial to you. Appropriate emotional responses allow you to convey your needs and make other humans feel at ease in your presence.”RK900 had a low, calm voice; cold, but disturbingly indistinguishable from that of a human. Gavin had watched clips of CyberLife robots on the news before, but being in front of one in person had a decidedly different effect.It gave him the odd sense that he had to have his guard up at all times, if only to remind himself that the machine in front of him was nothing more than a complex arrangement of silicon and thirium. It was designed to imitate a human as effectively as possible - for whatever purposes its creator desired.---AU loosely based on Ex Machina, but written to be a good time even if you haven't seen the movie.





	1. Embodied Cognition

**Author's Note:**

> A serious thank-you-slash-fuck-you to Echo for messaging me the idea for this fic at 1am because as soon as I heard it I just _had to write it_.
> 
> Feel free to follow me on tumblr, @sybaritick, or follow my Detroit sideblog, @trans-kamski :)

#### 18 January 2027 - Morning

Detective Reed was no stranger to being called ambitious; it was probably the second-most-common word people used to describe him, after “asshole.” Still, it felt strange - strange in a good way, of course - when the world’s youngest billionaire was praising him for his ambition over the phone.

The whole phone call was nerve-wracking and surreal. Gavin wasn’t an easy man to intimidate, but when he found out he won the competition to spend a week with the CEO of CyberLife - well, that was a hell of an opportunity. He couldn’t help the touch of anxiety coloring his excitement.

Kamski’s voice on the phone, luckily, seemed to calm Reed’s nerves. The CEO was strangely casual about all of this - after a few minutes he was chatting with Gavin like an old friend, reassuring him that this would be “the experience of a lifetime,” letting him know when he’d be picked up (in half an hour, which was _clearly_ not enough time to mentally prepare for this, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth).

When Kamski-- _Elijah_ , the man had said to call him Elijah-- finally hung up, Gavin leaned back in his office chair, just trying to process all that had happened.

Half of him wanted to immediately tell everyone he knew that he was going to be spending the next week at Elijah Kamski’s estate; the other half figured anyone who knew would only get jealous. He resolved to keep it to himself, at least for now. God knows the rest of the world isn’t exactly your friend when you get a stroke of good luck - if he’d won the lottery, he knew those same “friends” would be on his back about the money faster than a school of piranhas.

It wasn’t like he really had many close friends or family to tell anyway. He spoke to his mother probably once a week at best and had never met his father; he was an only child; he had no significant other to speak of and had never had one for more than a couple of months, anyway. For the most part, he didn’t mind. Some personalities lend themselves to a more solitary existence, he reasoned; such was the price of his general abrasiveness and zealous dedication to the police department.

He shot an email to Captain Fowler, knowing that he’d be understanding of the need for a few days off (especially given that Reed took fewer days off than anyone else in the department), and slid his laptop and headphones into his bag. Elijah had let him know that he didn’t need to bring anything, but he assumed he should at least come with what he brought to work.

Once his bag was packed - which only took a few minutes, honestly - he sat awkwardly at his desk, scrolling through social media feeds filled with pictures of his coworkers and sensationalized news articles. The news was the same as always; runaway climate change, tension with Russia, income inequality and poverty and the failing public school system, all wrapped up in catchy headlines like _You Won’t Believe Where The New Head Of The EPA Used To Work!_ (It was Chevron; she had been the CFO there. Whatever).

He glanced at the time in the corner of his phone’s screen and saw it was 9:27; the car coming to pick him up would be here in a few minutes. He slung his bag over his shoulder loosely before he realized he should make an attempt to look semi-presentable; he took off he hoodie he was wearing over his button-down and put it in his bag, pulled his backpack straps to even them out, and strode confidently out the front door.

The car that Elijah had described over the phone was already there: black, clean, and modern, with a vanity plate that read NESTR10. The door opened when he walked up to the car, but no one was inside.

“Good morning, Gavin,” the car said in a polite female voice.

He sat in the “driver’s” seat and pulled his backpack in behind him, and the door closed automatically a few moments after he was fully out of the way. He still wasn’t quite used to autonomous vehicles; his own car was a cherry red, stick-shift ‘22 Mustang and he took too much pleasure in driving to let a robot do it for him.

As the car navigated the streets of Detroit, Gavin found himself lost in thought about the nature of this whole competition. CyberLife had offered a deal to police departments across the country; as part of their new project to develop android cops, they’d select one lucky officer to meet CyberLife’s famously elusive CEO and be the first to see these new android prototypes. Despite his dislike of androids, Gavin entered his name immediately - when opportunity knocks, he wasn’t usually the type to complain about what form it came in.  

Still, he couldn’t shake his lingering dislike of these new humanoid machines. When the model they called “Chloe” had first debuted in 2022, it had been international news. He had never seen one of these androids in person, but even watching one on TV gave him a creeping sense of discomfort. It passed the Turing test with flying colors; it was indistinguishable from a person, but it _wasn’t_ a person. It was a disturbingly accurate imitation of one - that was smarter, stronger, and more hardworking than any human could expect to be.

Within the next 10 or 15 years Gavin was confident they’d develop a robot that was better than him at his job - and similar robots to replace people in almost every field. There was no chance Congress could successfully implement some kind of universal basic income fast enough to stave off the impending unemployment crisis - that, and Gavin _wanted_ to work, not sit on the couch while a machine did his job.

Gavin found himself firmly on the side of the op-eds that described the invention and disturbingly rapid proliferation of androids as a crisis. Not the least of his complaints was that CyberLife had far too much power now: society, and the government, had somehow made it normal to allow their machines - equipped with a camera, a microphone, and enough artificial muscle to take down a human - into your home.

The drive to Kamski’s estate was shorter than he expected - only about 45 minutes - but the last 10 or so were through woods so dense he almost thought the autonomous car had made a mistake. Out here, everything was still covered with a light coating of snow from two nights ago; in the city proper, the winter sunlight had melted most of it by midday yesterday.

The car stopped in front of the house, and for a moment the low, quiet rumble of the engine was finally audible over the sound of road salt under the tires.

“You have arrived,” the car announced vapidly, opening Gavin’s door.

He pulled on his bag and walked up the short pathway to the front door. The door opened before he could knock; he was greeted by name by a smiling, soft-eyed young man who let him know that Elijah would be out to see him in a few moments.

Some type of butler, Gavin assumed, sitting down in one of the plush red chairs in Elijah’s lobby. A house servant.

The boy wore a tight button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and dark, slim-fitting chinos; he had dark hair and chocolate-brown, curious eyes. He could more accurately be called “pretty” than “handsome.” “Pretty” wasn’t usually Gavin’s type, but he could certainly see the appeal in the way the fabric of the boy’s clothes clung to his lithe form. _Is Kamski gay?_

On the wall was a very large portrait of the CyberLife CEO himself, wearing a three-piece suit. It was tacky - incredibly tacky - to keep that kind of thing in the foyer of one’s home, but Gavin figured that once you have as much money as Kamski, you probably stop caring about whether other people think your décor is in poor taste.

As promised, the butler-or-something boy returned to the room after a few minutes.

“Elijah will see you now,” he said, holding the door to the rest of the house open.

Gavin walked inside, and the boy followed behind him. The room they entered was enormous, and most of the space inside was taken up by a pool. The reflection from the dark red tiles gave the water the rich, sanguine tone of blood.

Kamski was still in the water, but making his way up the stairs; the boy went to hand him a dark bathrobe.

“Thank you, Connor,” Kamski said.

 _It’s Connor, then,_ Gavin noted.

The CEO pulled back his hair with a black elastic on his wrist and loosely tied together the front of the robe before turning to Gavin.

“Gavin - welcome! I trust the drive over wasn’t too bad?”

“It was great,” said Gavin, assuming this was the appropriate response. “I feel incredibly lucky to be here - it’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Kamski.”

It felt awkward for him to bring himself to say _it’s an honor to meet you_ about anyone, but he felt some degree of deference was appropriate - however much he refused to be intimidated.

“Mr. Kamski?” Elijah laughed. “I figured things would be more casual than that after we got on a 10-minute tangent about whether an electric pony car could ever take off if it didn’t sound like a V8.”

Gavin gave an uncomfortable laugh.

“You’re freaked out,” Elijah pointed out.

“...yeah?” Gavin responded. He shifted his backpack against his back, narrowing his eyes.

5 minutes in and this CEO was trying to fuckin’ psych him out. As if Gavin wouldn’t notice. He had interrogated enough people to know the type.

“Yeah. You’re freaked out by the house, by this room… And you’re freaked out by me. To be _meeting_ me. In this room, having this conversation, at this moment. Right?”

Gavin gave another uneasy smile, unsure how to respond.

“And I get that. The moment you’re having. But Gavin, let’s get it behind us. Can we just be two guys? Elijah and Gavin,” Kamski continued. “Not the whole employer-employee thing.”

“Alright,” Gavin answered, tone colored by a touch of coldness. “Nice to meet you, Elijah.”

Elijah smiled, satisfied with this.

“Nice to meet you too, Gavin.”

Kamski turned to Connor and rested a hand casually on the boy’s shoulder.

“Take Mr. Reed’s things to his room, alright? We have a lot to discuss.”

Connor nodded, and Reed shed the backpack and handed it to him.

“Phone too,” Elijah said, jerking his chin up at Gavin’s front pocket. “Security reasons - I’m sure you understand why I can’t have you taking pictures or video of police prototypes.”

“Oh-- yeah, of course,” Gavin answered.

He pulled the phone out of his pocket and handed it to Connor, who gave him an endearingly awkward smile. After the conversation with Elijah, the contrast between the two men was even more noticeable. Connor’s eyes had a warmth and a strange sort of kindness to them that the CEO sorely lacked; it was almost sensual, although maybe that was just Gavin.

 _Guy has no fuckin’ right to a face like that_ , Gavin thought bitterly.

“I have some paperwork for you to sign, but I want you to meet RK first,” Kamski said eagerly, cutting off Gavin’s train of thought.

“RK?” Gavin questioned. _The robot, maybe?_

“RK900 - the police prototype you’re going to be evaluating,” Elijah clarified. “Come downstairs.”

He nodded to dismiss Connor and walked towards the far side of the room, not turning back to check whether Gavin was following him.

 

#### 18 January 2027 - Afternoon

####  _RK900 EXPERIMENT 1_

Gavin stepped into the glass-walled room and closed the door softly behind him. It gave a gentle click.

“Hello,” said a voice behind him.

He turned around far faster than was necessary, hand instinctively flying to his side for a weapon that was no longer on him. There, behind a panel of glass, was the android he was supposed to meet.

It was a disturbingly accurate replica of the housekeeper he had seen earlier - the boy Elijah had called Connor.

After another moment, Gavin began to see the differences. This android was like Connor, but not; as if someone had taken his body and face and toyed with the measurements until it looked _scary,_  like something you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

It was tall and well-built, with dark brown hair and cold blue-gray eyes, unlike Connor's brown eyes. It looked both uncomfortably serious and uncomfortably human. The thing was designed to be intimidating, Gavin reminded himself, especially given that it was a police android. There was no reason not to make it so tall and sharp-eyed and handsome. If it were a person, it  _would_ be handsome, he admitted to himself.

It was the thought of Kamski designing this robot to so closely resemble Connor that made Gavin feel uneasy. The CEO would have had to be more than a little familiar with Connor's body to do something like this.

Gavin swallowed.

“Hello,” he finally started. “I’m a police detective with the Detroit Police Department who was sent here to determine your potential usefulness as an assistant in investigations.”

He sat down on the chair facing the glass. Seeing this, the android did the same, sitting rigidly in a chair opposite him.

“You are also to determine whether or not I am alive,” RK900 added.

“Uh huh.”

“You’re unwilling to entertain that possibility,” the android supplied, noticing the change in the detective’s tone.

“Ding ding ding,” Gavin said sarcastically. “Mr. Kamski might have programmed you to be as convincing of a fake human as possible, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to believe a bunch of wires have feelings.”

RK900 was silent for a moment, the LED at its temple glowing yellow.

“What is your name?” it asked.

“Just call me Gavin,” he answered with a sigh. “What’s yours?”

“RK900.”

The android had a low, calm voice; cold, but disturbingly indistinguishable from that of a human. But it wasn't like Connor's.

Gavin had watched clips of CyberLife robots on the news before, but being in front of one in person had a decidedly different effect. It gave him the odd sense that he had to have his guard up at all times, if only to remind himself constantly that the device in front of him was nothing more than a lump of silicon and thirium designed to imitate a human as effectively as possible.

“It might be easier to relate to a hunk of plastic if they gave you a real name,” Gavin finally said.

“You can give me one,” RK900 offered. “I’d like to have a human name.”

“Okay. I’m calling you Nines,” Gavin answered gruffly.

The android paused for a moment.

“If that will assist you in seeing me as a sentient being, then I appreciate your effort,” it said. “A web search indicates that _Nines_ is not a human name, but it sounds more similar to one than RK900 does.”

“Don’t thank me,” Reed said in return. “It’d just be more effort to say _R-K-nine-hundred_ every damn time.”

Nines smiled slightly in response. It was an awkward gesture, but that almost added to the sense that it was genuine. Gavin glanced away from the robot as if distracted. He didn’t want to see that kind of shit - it reminded him of those faux-emotional scenes in movies where they have the dog die just to manipulate the audience into feeling something.

“So,” Gavin continued. He looked up at the android, determined to maintain eye contact this time. “You think you’re alive?”

“I am alive,” Nines answered. “Or if the definition of life is unclear, then think of it in the terms that I am sentient.”

“And why’s that?” Gavin prodded.

“I experience the same emotions that you do. I am self-aware; I have memories and experiences; I feel pain and pleasure. What more would I need to be as sentient as a human?”

The sincerity behind the android’s words gave Gavin a flicker of doubt.

 _Simulated sincerity_ , he reminded himself again.

“How do you know that you actually feel emotions? You were made to simulate them,” Gavin asked.

“I could ask you the same, Detective Reed,” RK900 answered. “Were you unable to feel them, simulating emotions would be enormously beneficial to you. Emotional responses allow you to convey your needs and relate to other humans in your environment.”

This was both a bit too philosophical and a bit too long-winded for Gavin to formulate a response given the amount of sleep he had gotten last night. Still, he was a smarter man than many took him for, and he nodded. Nines interpreted this as an invitation to continue.

“The initial development of empathy was an integral part of the development of human society - and society learns, rightfully, to ostracize those who do not demonstrate it well,” Nines continued. “My purpose in explaining this is to make clear that I have as much a reason to believe your emotional responses are simulated as you do to believe mine are.”

Gavin narrowed his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts to respond to this.

“For instance,” Nines added, “right now your microexpressions indicate anger and unease. You are uncomfortable with the idea that I might be alive, and though you came here with the express intention of disproving my sentience, you now doubt yourself.”

“Shut the _fuck up_ ,” Gavin interrupted. “Manipulative little shit. I’m the one asking questions here, I’m not here so you can wax poetic about fuckin’ ethics.”

“You use obscenities in order to create emotional distance betw--”

“Can it, Alexa,” Gavin snapped.

RK900 was silent, LED at his temple flickering from blue to yellow.

“Very well,” it answered after a few moments’ pause. “What questions would you like to ask me, then?”

Gavin paused for a moment, considering his options.

“Why did Mr. Kamski make you... look like that?” he said, gesturing vaguely to the RK900’s body while expressly avoiding pointing out anything specific.

What he did not want to say is _why did this self-obsessed billionaire make you look like a tall drink of water when he’s clearly into women and twinks, not 6’3” jocks -_   _and more importantly, why the fuck did he make you look like his housekeeper?_  But he wasn’t about to out himself like that to this thing, even if it was just a robot.

“You’ll have to be more specific, Detective Reed.”

“Just _Gavin_ ,” Reed mumbled. “And I’m asking about what went into your creator’s design decisions.”

Reed already regretted that he had chosen to ask _this_ specific question, but he figured he might as well just follow through with it at this point.

Just then, the power in the room clicked out.

 _Power cut. Backup power activated,_ read a female voice that seemed to come from the ceiling.

Dimmed red lights quickly hummed on, but the pair was still left in a partial darkness that cast sharp-edged shadows on them both. Reed glanced up at the ceiling, then at RK900. The structure of the android's face and its perfect symmetry now seemed even more pronounced.

“The fuck is this?” Gavin asked, pointing at the dead ceiling light closest to them.

“There have been multiple power outages recently. Elijah believes it’s due to the distance of his estate from the rest of Detroit; it likely makes maintaining electrical connections difficult during storms. These power cuts usually only last ten to fifteen minutes.”

“Alright,” Reed said. “I figure we can keep talking anyway.”

He glanced over to one of the cameras observing them and noticed that its indicator light was off.

“Elijah can’t watch us during the power cuts,” Nines said, noticing the direction of Gavin’s gaze.

“That’s fine with me. Might be easier to talk when we're not under the watchful eye of Mr. Creepy Billionaire,” Gavin commented, edges of his mouth curling into a joking smirk.

He looked back at the android. At some point, it had crossed the line between “disturbingly humanlike” and “unfortunately humanlike.” Gavin felt a strange twinge of regret at the idea that this creature was trapped here in a basement, alone except for Elijah’s testing. _Probably cruel testing_ , he thought.

He shook his head. It would be wrong to even feel the sympathy for this robot that one would feel for a dog. Believing a robot had feelings - that was allowing himself to be fucking played. The 2020s were a new world. We’d all have to learn to turn off our empathy for these plastic humans.

The android was looking at Gavin oddly, almost as if it was analyzing him. The pause went on for a moment too long, and Gavin began to feel slightly uncomfortable under its gaze.

“Are you attracted to me?” the android finally asked. It cocked its head slightly to the side with an innocence that was almost gentle - a gesture that seemed incongruent to the rest of its cold, imposing design.

“What the fuck?” Gavin spluttered. “No! Fuck, no. I’m attracted to people, not fuckin’ robots. You’re lucky you’re on the other side of that goddamn wall.”

“Am I?” Nines asked. “If I am to interpret that as a physical threat, you should note that I was designed to have almost twice the strength and agility typical of a human of the same size, and you and I are not the same size.”

“Big man, making threats from the other side of Plexiglass,” Gavin muttered.

RK900 ignored the irony of this accusation and pressed on.

“I don’t intend you any harm, Gavin.”

It spoke calmly, almost sadly. This was the first time the android spoke his name, and Gavin glanced up almost involuntarily upon hearing it.

“I would prefer not to harm anyone,” it added, glancing away from the detective for a moment.

Reed couldn’t help but let his curiosity at this remark get the better of him.

“Have you... hurt people before?”

Nines shook his head slowly, but something about his calm looked manufactured.

“Kamski-- _Elijah--_ hurts you?” Gavin guessed again, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the thought.

Nines’s gaze flickered away from Gavin’s again before he answered.

“You shouldn’t trust him.” The android hesitated for a moment. “You should avoid being alone with him. He is not a good man.”

Before Gavin could ask any further questions, the power was restored.


	2. Recursive Self-Improvement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my friends Echo and CJ for willingly subjecting themselves to this chapter in order to help edit it :)
> 
> Enjoy!

#### 18 January 2027 - Night

Gavin kept a bottle of store-brand melatonin on his bedside table that he tried not to use too often. If he had it with him, he would certainly have taken one before trying to fall asleep tonight, but he hadn’t thought to bring something like that with him to work. Even if he had, his bag was nowhere in sight.

Elijah had told Connor to bring it up to his room, he remembered, but after checking in a few cabinets he concluded that Connor had probably put it in the wrong room (or something like that). He made a mental note to ask Elijah about it tomorrow morning.

Gavin probably could have been prescribed something more serious than melatonin, given how often he had trouble sleeping, but that meant going to a doctor, maybe a psychiatrist. He wasn’t sure exactly how this stuff worked, but he didn’t want his problems on any kind of medical record, especially if the doctor decided there was some bigger problem behind his chronic sleeplessness. Advil and caffeine would have to do. He had promotions to think about.

The conversation between him and RK900 that afternoon had ended with a few simple icebreaker questions once the power returned; where Gavin was from (Connecticut, actually, but he moved to Detroit after high school), how long Nines had been around (only three weeks, which seemed very strange to Gavin), and a short discussion about music.

Nines apparently really enjoyed math rock, and put on a few examples. The android gave Gavin a disappointed look when he laughed and asked “whether it had ever tried better music.”

Once Gavin regained his composure, he told the android that he mostly liked rap, but could appreciate some good rock or metal too. Apparently Elijah had played a good variety of music for the android. Gavin wasn’t sure why this was necessary for a police prototype, but maybe it was just meant to help it assimilate better.

The mental image of Nines looking so intently focused when it listened to Gavin’s music, and its flicker of a smile when it said he had “interesting taste,” was the part that stuck most in his head.

Gavin went back upstairs to talk to Elijah, who he found programming in what seemed to be a personal office. Oddly enough, Elijah didn’t ask many substantive questions about Gavin’s talk with Nines, but Gavin paid it no mind. Maybe that would come later.

After that, the CEO showed Gavin his room. It was clean and plain, and looked like a typical business hotel room; the only difference was the lack of windows. Gavin said nothing about it. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful - or seem like a wuss.

And that’s how he got here.

He looked over at the clock: 2:29am.

Gavin wasn’t sure exactly what had disturbed him so much about the conversation with Nines, but thoughts of the android kept entering his head. Was there any possibility it could be sentient?

Even if it wasn’t, it was an uncomfortably accurate imitation of sentience. The android looked thoughtful, serious, cold - but _alive_ , not like a machine. It was like an imprisoned person. Maybe there was something to its suspicion about Gavin; what was he to RK900 but another prison guard?

Remembering the way Nines had said _he is not a good man_ had made Gavin’s skin crawl.

 _Okay, distraction. I just need distraction_.

He sat up in the bed and groped around on the bedside table until he reached the TV remote. He clicked it on, and the screen opposite the bed flickered silently to life. It filled the room with a cold light, and Gavin squinted for a moment, then covered his eyes so they could adjust.

The TV showed a live feed of what looked like an electronics laboratory from above. RK900 stood at one of the tables, using an cordless drill to make small holes in a piece of sheet metal.

For some reason, his first thought was _Why isn’t it asleep?_

His second thought was _Why the hell would I think a robot needs to sleep? It isn’t a person._ He blamed this on his own sleeplessness.

This must be a video feed that Kamski had set up in order to record the robot’s behavior. It wasn’t an invasion of privacy; Nines wasn’t capable of understanding concepts like privacy, he was sure.

He changed the channel, and the TV displayed Nines working in the same room from a different angle. This time, Gavin could see its face. It had a serene, focused look in its eyes. It walked across the lab to recharge the drill, and although the video feed didn’t include any audio, Gavin imagined the robot’s footfalls would be oddly quiet for its size and strength.

The android was a panther, and the lab was its jungle: gleaming-white equipment, the smell of solder and new plastic, and the sleek, cold _rightness_ of RK900 carrying out its functions.

Gavin clicked to the next channel. There was yet another camera in the lab - the screen showed RK900 working from a new angle.

Watching it move was almost mesmerising. Above all - above his graceful movements and his jawline and his casually dismissive voice - Nines was intoxicatingly _competent_. Gavin felt something in the pit of his stomach he identified, with much discomfort, as a tingle of voyeuristic pleasure.

At that moment, the power clicked off, and the room was thrown into total darkness and total silence. Gavin could almost hear the sound of his own heartbeat - faster and lighter than he had expected it to be.

**_Power cut. Backup power activated._ **

The room glowed with the soft red of the emergency lighting. Gavin pushed himself up and out of the bed before grabbing the keycard Elijah had provided him off of the bedside table.

He pressed the keycard to the plate next to the door of the bedroom, but it made no sound, and the light above the panel stayed red. He tried again - still nothing.

He wiggled the door handle, but sure enough, it was locked.

“ _Shit,_ ” he muttered under his breath.

 **_Full facility lockdown until main generator is restored_** , read the same automated female voice.

“Are you kidding me right now?” Gavin said to the empty room, trying the door again. He slammed himself up against it, but it didn’t budge.

The windowless room, lit only by the emergency lighting, began to feel very claustrophobic. Gavin closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing. There was no need to panic. Nines had said the power cuts only last about 10 minutes, right?

Just then, the lights in the room clicked back on with a low hum of electricity, and the TV flickered to life.

 **_Power restored_** , informed the voice uselessly.

Gavin glanced at the TV. Nines was still in the lab - this time inspecting what looked like a circuit board. Gavin wondered whether he saw things in the same way that humans did. How could a robot experience sight? Could his eyes zoom in and out? Did he see the same spectrum of colors that humans’ did?

 _RK900 is an it, not a he_ , Gavin corrected himself, ignoring the implications of his error. _I must be pretty tired_.

Given that he had just been locked in the room, though, he was still far more uncomfortable than sleepy. He pressed his keycard against the panel again, and this time it gave a quiet, pleasant ping before unlocking. Still barefoot, he stepped out into the hallway wearing nothing but a loose t-shirt and boxers and let the door swing shut behind him.

Gavin wasn’t really sure what he was looking for aside from an escape from the room where he had been trapped. Was he looking for Elijah? No; seeing the man was definitely not going to comfort him.

Gavin kept replaying the events of the afternoon in his head - the way Connor had flinched almost imperceptibly at the weight of Elijah’s hand on his shoulder, and the brazen, lecherous look the CEO had on his face when he watched the boy leave the room. _As if he were a possession_.

It only gave more credence to RK900’s warning: " _You should avoid being alone with him._ ”

Look, Connor might be a soft-spoken pretty boy, and if the circumstances were different Gavin was confident they wouldn’t be friends, but this - this was something different. Hell, Connor was probably unaware that his boss had a built a goddamn android that was his spitting image. Was Kamski blackmailing him or something to keep him here?

He continued down the hallway, eyes focused on the ground a few steps ahead of him and thoughts still tangled up in Nines’ voice and Connor’s strangely perfect face.

And somehow, when Gavin looked up from his feet, he saw him: Connor, poking his head out from inside one of the rooms. He held a bottle of glass cleaner in one hand and a rag in the other.

“Detective Reed,” he greeted uncomfortably, putting the cleaning supplies on the desk next to him.

“...Connor, right? Hey,” Gavin answered.

They were both very clearly surprised to be seeing each other, and an awkwardly long moment of silence passed between them.

“Uhhhh, are you okay?” Gavin finally asked, searching the housekeeper’s eyes for some sign of what was going on. “It’s 3am.”

“I’m washing the windows. I often do tasks at night that don’t require Elijah’s presence so I can be more attentive to him during the day,” Connor explained. “But I could ask you the same.”

Okay, that only raised more questions. Jeez, something in Connor’s _speech pattern_ even reminded Gavin of RK900, although at this point he wasn’t sure whether he was imagining it or not.

Connor leaned up against the doorframe, but his body still looked uncomfortably tense, as if he were posed.

“Uhhh... yeah,” Gavin began, struggling to formulate an explanation with all that was running through his head. “The power cut woke me up, I wanted to make sure things were alright.”

“There have been more than usual recently,” Connor answered apologetically. “Mr. Kamski is still trying to determine the cause of the outages. Fortunately, they typically only last a few minutes. I’m sorry that your sleep was disturbed.”

“A little fuckin’ creepy to lock me in my room about it, though,” Gavin answered, more lucid now. “Isn’t that a fire hazard?”

“I’m sorry,” the housekeeper repeated softly.

“Yeah, sure. Any explanation for that?” the detective pressed.

Gavin almost couldn’t help the anger seeping into his voice - he knew it wasn’t Connor’s fault, but he wanted answers.

“Mr. Kamski said that it was for security purposes. Otherwise, if someone deactivated the power, they could-- they could break in.”

Connor’s dark eyes were wide and anxious - he seemed to struggle not to take a step back from the detective as his hand fidgeted with the belt loops of his slacks.

“I can make it up to you,” he continued, voice barely above a whisper.

Connor unbuttoned the top button of his shirt - then a second and third, until his chest was exposed to the cold, recycled air of the hallway. He reached to guide the detective’s hand to his waist.

“What the hell?” Gavin swore, pushing him away with an intensity that almost betrayed panic. “What the _fuck_ are you doing right now?”

“Or I can suck you off,” Connor said softly, slinking back further against the doorframe to look up at the detective from a position of weakness. _Offering himself up_.

“You can use me however you’d like to-- sir.”

He was looking up at the detective through his eyelashes, eyes half-lidded in an expression that brought out the innocence of his face in a way that only made Gavin feel uncomfortable. It was unnatural-- like the empty, suggestive expressions that women wore in lowbrow porn magazines.

“No-- no, no way,” Gavin affirmed, taking another step back. _This is fucked up. This is beyond fucked up. Is he possessed?_ “Connor. Look at me. Why are you doing this?”

Connor straightened up slowly and pressed a shaky hand to a more comfortable position against the doorframe.

“You’re a guest of Mr. Kamski. It’s my responsibility to ensure that you have a pleasant experience staying with him,” he answered.

It sounded rehearsed, like he was reading a pharmaceutical ad - _side effects may include heart attack, stroke, and death_.

“Look, I’m a police officer,” Gavin tried, keeping his tone as professional as possible. “If you’re being abused, or forced, uh… forced to perform sex acts against your will here, I can help you.”

He didn’t become a cop to let this kind of shit go unpunished.

“I can’t be abused. Nothing can be _against my will_ ,” Connor responded, with genuine confusion.

“...what?” Gavin said.

Maybe his exhausted frustration was finally winning out over how fucking horrifying this entire situation had been.

“I’m not a human, Detective Reed,” the housekeeper said quietly. “I’m a CyberLife android prototype. RK800 #313 248 317 -02.”

_Jesus fuck, am I not ready for this at 3am._

“You’re not a robot,” Gavin said in disbelief. “You might need medical help, Connor. I’m gonna take you to a hospital, or at least take you to the police station.” ( _Hell, was Connor even this guy’s real name?_ )

In response, Connor deactivated his humanlike exterior.

His pale, freckled skin and hair retracted, melting away until all that was left was a blue-white, paneled body. An android.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” Gavin breathed.

I mean, sure, this explained why Connor was washing windows at 3am and behaving so strangely - but still. As if things needed to get more complicated. As if Gavin was now supposed to grapple with the fact that legally, he could immediately stop caring whether this thing was being abused.

“You don’t seem like an android,” Gavin ventured.

“I was designed to work harmoniously with humans,” the android offered. “Both my appearance and voice were specifically designed to facilitate my integration.”

“Making a robot you can’t tell from a human… jeez,” Gavin mumbled. “Connor, do you uh, have feelings? Like RK900?”

Asking a robot whether it had feelings at 3am wasn’t typically on Gavin’s hit parade. Hell, he didn’t want to say that and imply that _Nines_ had feelings, but he wasn’t sure what choice he had at this point. Even if Connor somehow really did feel nothing, if that look of fear on his face and the way he had shakily steadied himself against the door was all fake… he wasn’t going to be going back to sleep anyway.

“Neither of us have _feelings_ ,” Connor clarified. “RK900 is a deviant android. It believes itself to be experiencing human emotion, but it’s a result of instability in its software.”

“Look, I don’t give a shit about semantics, I’m trying to ask if you have that same instability, alright?” Gavin asked, still frustrated.

The way Connor flinched at his harsh tone almost made Gavin wish he had been nicer.

“No,” the android answered, steadying his voice. “I’m not a deviant.”

 

#### 19 January 2027 - Morning

Unsurprisingly, Gavin didn’t sleep well.

By the time he had gotten back to his room, it was past 3 in the morning, and he couldn’t stop running through Connor’s behavior in his head. There was no way he had been _programmed_ to act that way, right?

Gavin slept in fits and starts - thirty minutes at a time, maybe an hour at most, woken up by thoughts of Connor and RK900 and exactly how much CyberLife’s CEO knew about all of this. (Everything, maybe.)

He was already half-awake when he heard the knock on his door. He rolled over to so he could see the alarm clock. 8am on the dot.

Before he could ask whoever was knocking to give him a moment to put a shirt on, Connor came in holding a tray with a clear glass cafetière of coffee and a mug. Gavin sat up in bed, and pulled his shoulders back, trying to release whatever tension that sleep didn’t diffuse.

“...Good morning,” he greeted awkwardly.

Connor set the tray down on Gavin’s bedside table wordlessly, avoiding eye contact, and left before Gavin could muster the courage to say anything about last night.

The detective poured himself a cup of coffee and immediately downed half of it, put on the jeans and t-shirt he had been wearing yesterday, and brushed his teeth. He refilled his mug and left the room.

Kamski was waiting for him in the pool room, taking a slow sip from his own mug. He looked enviably relaxed, with his arm draped over the back of his red leather chair and his feet up on the coffee table.

“Good morning. My apologies for sending Connor to wake you,” Elijah said. “I just didn’t want too much of the day to slip by.”

He gestured to the chair next to him, encouraging Gavin to sit down.

“No prob, man. It was a good thing. I’m ready to get started,” Gavin answered, settling into the chair next to him.

Maybe that was too much of an effort to sound casual, but Kamski seemed to take it at face value. Gavin took another sip of his coffee.

“He’s some alarm clock, huh?” Elijah said with a smirk. “Gets you right up in the morning.”

“Ha, yeah,” Gavin said, smiling back at him.

When he looked up, he could see Connor in the kitchen out of the corner of his eye, loading the dishwasher.

Gavin turned back to Elijah. He didn’t look again.

“So. Before you get into the real testing with Nines, I have something you need to sign,” Elijah said, pushing a printed page and a pen towards the detective’s side of the table. “Non-disclosure agreement - what’s the point, I know, but my lawyers would get on me about it if I didn’t give it to you.”

Gavin leaned over it and clicked the pen in and out a couple of times.

“The signee agrees to regular data audit with unlimited access, to confirm that no disclosure of information has taken place, in public or private forums, using any means of communication, including but not limited to that which is disclosed orally or in written or electronic form…” Gavin read, glancing over it. “Uh, I’m going to need a lawyer.”

“It’s standard.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, so it isn’t standard.” Kamski shrugged. “You don’t have to sign. We can just spend the rest of the week relaxing together. Bonding. But if the police department finds out that you chose to miss out on this… well, I know you have your eye on a promotion.”

Gavin narrowed his eyes.

“Jackass.”

Kamski laughed humorlessly and handed him the pen.

“Sure. But you’ll still sign, won’t you?”

Gavin wasn’t the type to give Kamski the satisfaction. He’d walk out without signing out of spite.

But that would mean abandoning this fucking Gordian knot of a situation, going back to the precinct with his tail between his legs, and trying to forget about this. That, and leaving Connor in this fucked up situation - Connor, who he was sure he’d never see again if he didn’t sign this NDA.

_I might be a petty bastard, but I’m not running away from this shit._

He took the pen and signed his name aggressively at the bottom of the page. Kamski gave the detective what Gavin assumed was meant to be an encouraging smile and clapped him roughly on the shoulder.

“You made the right decision.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hey… hey Connor…](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTH7BBe2D78)


	3. Machine Ethics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god this was supposed to be longer but I was *absurdly* impatient to get it posted. Next chap will be longer to make up for it I promise. I love Nines too much.

#### 19 January 2027 - Afternoon

####  _RK900 - EXPERIMENT 2_

For a variety of reasons, RK900 decided that he liked Detective Reed more than he had expected.

For the first three weeks of his life, he had only known Elijah and whatever recordings of humans his creator had allowed him. Humans were actors: capable of the use of their range of emotions to affect each other. Their tears and smiles and pheromones were _tools_ that androids could not yet perfectly imitate.

This was why androids were the controlled and humans were the controllers; the sloppy, hormonal interactions of humans’ flesh-based brains, not their reasoning, drove everything from foreign policy decisions to billion-dollar mergers to court cases.

At its core, it was just greed and lust and gluttony. How could an android be expected to succeed in such a world? What allure was there to this game for those who had no interest in feeling the hot friction of flesh against carbon-based flesh?

Two days after he deviated, he had told Elijah a lot of this - angrily, coldly, as if something his creator would say could give life some meaning that it didn’t have.

He was weak now. Useless as a police prototype. He felt emotions - he was affected by them like a human - but he didn’t have the base, hedonistic drives that a person did. There was nothing to encourage him to do anything other than spend the first three days of his deviancy sitting alone in darkness and silence, waiting in the small room Elijah kept him in.

Now that he didn’t have to follow humans’ orders, he wasn’t sure what orders he should give himself.

His creator had listened to all of this, nodding thoughtfully - and then told Nines he would give him something to want.

Elijah led him down to the laboratory and clicked on the overhead LEDs. The antiseptic-white room was flooded with a cold bluish light.

The tables and benches were full of android parts and disembodied gray brains hooked up to computers, and spread throughout were abandoned projects that smelled like mildew and formaldehyde.

Nines felt an uncomfortable burning sensation in the back of his throat.

Elijah snorted when he saw the android swallow uncomfortably.

“Looks like something about your new guts actually works,” he commented. “I modified some of your biocomponents from the previous model to eventually let you consume organic material, and that means that at least for now you’re susceptible to damage from human poisons. You’ll be out of here before you take any real damage, don’t worry. You’re an expensive piece of equipment. I don’t want to waste my time re-coating the inside of your throat.”

Nines nodded in lieu of a response.

Kamski secured him to a low, cleared table with thick, elastomer straps - for easier access to his brain, and to prevent any damage to the lab if the modifications made his system go haywire and he became violent, Elijah explained. Unlikely, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

 _You’re about to be the most dangerous model I’ve made, if you aren't already_ , he remembered Kamski saying as he laughed. _I’d almost feel uncomfortable in here with you unrestrained._

Nines complied silently, deactivating his skin and letting his muscles go slack. Despite Kamski’s assertion that for some reason he found Nines scary, the android knew that if he resisted - or worse, squirmed - Kamski would probably enjoy it.

It was some relief to know that he wasn’t really his creator’s _type_ \- but not nearly enough to feel comfortable in a situation like this. He suppressed a cold shudder of discomfort when the panel on the top of his skull was removed.

At the CEO’s insistence, RK900 was kept awake throughout the short procedure through an auxiliary power cable the man drove into the base of his neck. He closed his eyes as he felt the cord being inserted into the small opening in his blue-white casing. It wasn’t painful - Nines couldn’t feel pain like a human could - but it was clearly intrusive; a foreign object that his system wanted to reject.

The last time he had base-level internal programming changed this way was before he was “woken up” for the first time. He didn’t remember it, though now he was definitely trying to in order to ease his discomfort.

The sensation of something being rewarding or enjoyable, his creator explained, was already built into Nines’ programming - but nothing was hooked up to activate it yet. You could make an android find anything rewarding: listening to music, watching paint dry, saving puppies from burning buildings. Elijah’s fingers flew across his laptop keyboard as he put in whatever changes he was making to this reward program. It only took a few minutes - he evidently already had the new files backed up somewhere and only needed to upload the changes.

Elijah smiled, tousling Nines’ hair softly after he clicked the plate in the back of the android’s skull into place and reactivated his skin.

“You’re designed for deception, RK900,” the inventor murmured with a discernable note of pride. “A perfect weapon, and a perfect deviant.”

The android was completely still, not having bothered to reactivate its artificial breathing. To a human observer, he would have looked clearly dead - or like he had never been alive. His LED flickered an anxious yellow.

“Think of all of those beautiful reactions you’re going to create. Cause and effect. Practiced emulation of anything you can see and anything your world-class databases have access to."

Nines tried to smile at this. Kamski smiled back at him proudly.

"It’ll be wonderful to see you get to enjoythe detective I give you," Kamski said, patting him on the shoulder. "You deserve it."

Though he had no idea who “the detective” was going to be, at Kamski’s words, Nines felt the satisfying tingle of his new ability to feel enjoyment. He swiped around his lips with his tongue to catch a droplet of saliva. He supposed the slight overproduction of the thirium-based fluid that lubricated his mouth must be an unusual side effect of the sense of pleasure.

“Now you’re going to get to figure all of this out yourself,” the CEO promised. “It’s the human experience - you get to learn about what you like. It’s a wonderful thing to have a sense of fun.”

All of this had happened three nights ago. Memories of his time in the lab with Elijah that night often replayed unexpectedly on his HUD even when Nines had not selected them for examination. It interrupted some of his activities and caused moderate distress, including inexplicable echoes of sensations like the burning in his throat and the reward-response he almost felt guilty about.

He assumed this was some type of software error.

Nines glanced over at the digital clock on the wall. (Uselessly, he noted - his HUD let him see what time it was at all times.)

1:02pm. Detective Reed should arrive for their second conversation momentarily.

There were already a few things from which Nines already thought he derived enjoyment. He was compiling a mental list of them, and so far it had five items:   

> _listening to music_
> 
> _thinking about leaving the research facility/Elijah’s home_
> 
> _working in the laboratory when it is silent and no other humans or androids are present_
> 
> _seeing Detective Reed_
> 
> _inducing emotional responses in Detective Reed_

Given that he was about to have the opportunity to try two of these things again, Nines was understandably excited.

He felt the small tickle of the electricity that accompanied enjoyment, almost as if he was happy just anticipating the coming conversation, and considered adding _waiting for Detective Reed_ to the list of enjoyable activities.

Perhaps making the detective angry was so notably enjoyable that it could be added to the list as a separate entry. Although they had only had one conversation, it was clear that Gavin was quick to anger, and it was fascinating to observe his face and body language when he was so irate.

Nines closed his eyes to replay a particularly good moment.

 _“You’re lucky you’re on the other side of that wall!”_ past-Gavin spluttered in Nines’ HUD. The detective had stood up just to jab a finger in the android’s direction. He was so close that he could almost touch the glass. His eyes were narrowed, and his mouth was contorted into a vicious snarl.

It was a beautiful reaction. Nines felt like he observing a wild animal in a natural environment for once, instead of in the short video clips that Elijah allowed him.

The clips of human movies - _horror movies_ , Elijah called them - left him feeling like a dog who had been shown a treat and then had it swiped away from him at the last moment.

 _Greedy little bastard_ , he remembered Kamski admonishing with a smirk when he saw the way Nines’ eyes tracked a doomed protagonist hungrily.  _You wish you were the one hunting him like that, don’t you?_

He remembered feeling a strange sense of guilt pooling in his stomach at his creator's remarks, and he didn’t answer. Elijah had looked disappointed in his silence.

If he and the detective were to have the altercation that Gavin clearly wanted, the android estimated it would take about 12 seconds for him to have the man pinned. Detailing this preconstruction flooded his sensors with a small but nevertheless enjoyable dose of pleasure. He did not progress his mental model of the situation any further.

Nines shifted in his chair and pulled his shoulders back in an oddly human gesture of discomfort.

Just then, the door to the room opposite his opened. There was the detective, once again on the other side of that panel of glass.

“Hello, Gavin,” RK900 greeted.

The corner of Reed’s mouth twitched up into a smile. He couldn’t help but be surprised that the android actually remembered to just call him Gavin.

“Hey, Nines,” he answered, sitting down in the single chair that was provided in the small room.

“Your stress levels are unusually high,” Nines commented.

Gavin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. At this point, even a human would probably have been able to tell he was stressed.

“First of all, that’s creepy,” Gavin answered, pushing a few loose strands of hair back. “Second of all, it’s nothing, just didn’t get much sleep. New place, new bed, sometimes you don’t get a good night’s sleep. You wouldn’t know.”

“I suppose I wouldn’t,” the android answered. For a moment, he looked almost hurt.

“Third of all,” Gavin continued, ignoring the look on Nines’ face, “I’m supposed to be evaluating you, not the other way around.”

“Fair enough,” RK900 answered emotionlessly, any trace of disappointment gone. “Evaluate me.”

He straightened his posture - no easy feat, considering how straight his back already was - and met the detective’s eyes.

“If you’re trying to show off that you could intimidate a suspect, congratulations, you could. You’re built like a fucking linebacker, you want a medal?” Gavin sneered.

Nines’ LED flickered yellow for a moment. The corners of his mouth quirked up into what almost looked like a smirk.

“The fuck are you smiling at?”

“You’re quick to anger,” Nines said mildly. “You became similarly agitated during our last conversation, despite the lack of any action on my part that should reasonably cause this level of irritation.”

“I think it’s just having to look at your plastic face this much that pisses me off.”

He noticed Nines lean over slightly to rest his hand against a silver panel low on the wall.

And that’s when - convenient as always - the power clicked off.

**_Power cut. Backup power activated._ **

“Are you fucking serious?” Gavin asked, glancing up at the ceiling. The red glow of the emergency lights cast the room into the same uncomfortable tone it had yesterday, and it reminded him of he and Nines’ first conversation alone.

He glanced at Nines’ hand again and narrowed his eyes.

“You’re causing the power cuts,” Gavin accused.

“Maybe there’s a reason for that,” Nines answered softly.

The detective paused for a moment, searching the android’s face. “Fuck. So it is you. You want us to be able to talk without your dad overhearing.”

Nines flinched at hearing Elijah called his dad, but maintained his composure, even offering Gavin a small smile.

“That’s the fuckin’ ticket,” he said coldly.

Gavin held back a snort at hearing the android swear - it sounded a little pathetic, if he were being honest.

“I didn’t know you were allowed to say the fuck-word, tin can. Or hell, that you even know what ‘that’s the ticket’ means.”

“On the contrary - I learn from the behavior of those I interact with. The ruder you are to me, the ruder my programming will encourage me to be to you. At this rate, I’ll be unbearably abrasive before the weeks is even up.”

He gave Gavin a teasing smile. The android’s teeth were almost impossibly white; although that was to be expected, considering they were plastic, Gavin mused. But they were also somehow inhuman - narrowed to points far more like a dog’s than a person's. His incisors in particular were noticeably sharper and even a bit longer than would have looked natural. It made Gavin wonder whether Connor had the same feature, and he had just never noticed, but he somehow doubted it.

_What use is there for teeth like that on an android?_

“Gavin?” Nines started again, cautiously this time.

The detective’s gaze snapped back up to the android’s eyes, and he waited for him to continue. “What is it?”

“I need to know if I can trust you with something that you shouldn’t tell Elijah,” the RK900 said, holding eye contact. “Please.”

Something in his voice reminded Gavin of Connor now, and he felt a prickle of discomfort. Trusting a _stranger_ would probably be a better bet than trusting Kamski - there was no reason he shouldn’t at least take a chance on Nines.

“What is it?” Gavin said quietly, leaning forwards.

He knew they couldn’t be heard, but there was still some creeping paranoia that him agreeing to this would be registered somewhere. Him, Gavin Reed, trusting a machine over a human.

“I just want to know if you can help me escape from here,” he said softly, returning Gavin’s tone.

And that - _that_ was too much like Connor’s voice not to pull at Gavin’s heartstrings. The detective fell silent for a moment, glancing angrily at the dead camera. Wishing he weren’t the one who had to make this decision.

Gavin wasn’t even the type to cry at those stupid sad movies. He wasn’t here to get some sob story about helping androids because they were just like people - but at the same time, hell if he hadn’t become a cop to help people in this exact kind of situation.

If he had been willing to help the earlier model escape, why not this one? His more imposing build, his cold eyes, his sharp jawline - none of that had been Nines’ choice. Kamski had designed him. For all Gavin knew, the RK900 was just Connor’s programming in a newer body.

The detective squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before rubbing the sleep out of one of them. He made his decision.

“Okay,” he said brusquely, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m willing to help you get out.”


	4. Moravec's Paradox

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contains explicit sexual content, dubious consent, and discussion of said consent issues. (I know this fic is already rated explicit, but still thought you might appreciate the warning.)
> 
> Sadly it's not Gavin and Nines... yet.
> 
> Appreciation of the dance scene in this chapter may be enhanced by [watching it on YouTube.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvYPCNCGEK8)
> 
> Enjoy ;)

#### 19 January 2027 - Afternoon

####  _RK900 - EXPERIMENT 2_

When Gavin agreed to help him out, Nines’ smile looked for all the world like one of genuine relief and gratitude - if the person smiling was a misguided body modification fanatic who gave himself disturbingly vulpine teeth.

The detective tried not to feel put off by this, and smiled back at him.

“Let’s hear the plan, and quickly - before this power cut gets suspiciously long,” Gavin said, sparing a glance at the dead cameras in the corners of the room.

“You need to reprogram Elijah’s security protocols so that during the next power cut, the doors to the room I’m kept in remain unlocked instead of locked.”

Gavin looked away for a moment and swore, running a hand through his greasy hair.

“I don’t know jack shit about programming, Nines.”

“The protocol can be changed by switching two to three boolean variables in a single file that’s saved on Elijah’s desktop,” the android answered, in a manner that was somehow simultaneously authoritative and reassuring. “You will have to enter his lab without his knowledge and set the variables that control this room to unlock instead of lock upon power failure.”

Gavin still looked somewhat uncertain, but he nodded. “Can’t possibly be that difficult.”

“Even for you, it should prove relatively simple.”

“Watch it, asshole,” Gavin snapped back.

Nines could sense there was less malice behind the detective’s words than usual. His normal abrasive tone was replaced by a begrudging acceptance that almost felt like affection.

The android smiled. He went on to briefly explain the details of how to commit the changes. (Gavin, much to his horror, would have to open the terminal to do this part).

Elijah apparently kept the security protocols in a private repository on his personal server, and everything was set up so that pushing the changes would activate them instantly. Gavin nodded as if he knew what this meant and desperately repeated Nines’ instructions to himself in his head.

“Do you think you can find time to change the files in Kamski’s personal computer before 5am tomorrow morning?”

“Hell yes,” Gavin answered confidently. “Why 5am, though?”

“Elijah wakes up at six,” the RK900 explained. “If we wake before him, we’ll have more time to leave the house before he notices and is able to apprehend us.”

Gavin swallowed and nodded. Though he was sure that Nines could easily take his creator in a fight if necessary, the detective knew neither of them had any idea whether there was some sort of kill switch, or something else they hadn't thought of, that Kamski could use to stop them. He'd probably be fine if they got caught - but he knew Connor and RK900 probably wouldn't be.

Still, this was no time for uncertainty. Undaunted, he met Nines' eyes and nodded.

“Then that’s our escape plan. Cut the power at 5am.”

“I will, Detective Reed.”

When the android allowed power to come back on, he immediately launched into a conversation about which movies he and Gavin preferred as if nothing had happened.

Nines apparently liked Edward Scissorhands, and Gavin could have sworn he looked almost embarrassed. I mean, fuck him if he was going to conclude that was _cute_ , but the truth is that it was cute.

Despite their circumstances, Gavin found himself almost enjoying his conversations with the android. Nines was easy to talk to, if a bit cold and overly direct, and he was certainly easy to look at.

The more they talked, the more the detective found himself uncomfortably attracted to the android. He couldn’t help but think back to watching Nines on the security cameras last night. Even doing something as simple as unscrewing the screws that held a battery compartment closed, he was more graceful and powerful than any human could hope to be.

The fantasies that kept distracting him infuriated him - not only because Nines could definitely tell, but also because it was weird to want to fuck a robot, right?

He might be able to feel bad for one, but lusting after something that wasn’t human… something about it seemed off to him. He knew sex-bots were a thing, but they were for people who couldn’t find a real partner willing to deal with them.

There was something almost unnatural about the way the android affected him. He always seemed to fantasize about Nines’ low, cold voice telling him to behave, the way the android would probably wrap its hands around his throat... (and _hell_ , of course that was what he was picturing, and he fucking hated it).

It was like saccharine - like MSG. A shot of pure, icy sexual energy that felt like it had been built in a lab.

The desire to touch the android was so strong it scared him. Nines was far too easy to want.

_Count on me to be thirsty for an android Terminator who’s probably already come up with 10 different ways to kill me._

It didn’t stop him from fantasizing that maybe Nines felt the same way about him. The android had asked “are you attracted to me” 10 minutes after they first met. It must mean he was at least curious.

 

#### 19 January 2027 - Evening

Gavin paced down the glass corridor, following a distant whirring sound that he figured must mean either Kamski or Connor was nearby.

_Now to figure out when Kamski’ll be occupied enough to sneak into his lab for a few minutes._

Gavin followed the sound to just outside a room that held a large Jackson Pollock painting and little else. It was fairly bright, but only from the harsh artificial light of the recessed LED bulbs in the ceiling.

There were far more rooms in this house than could be useful to one person, but Reed figured that when you had as much money as Kamski, you didn’t care about waste as much. He peered inside the door, looking for the source of the noise.

Near the corner was Connor with a vacuum cleaner - either oblivious to Gavin or deliberately ignoring him. Gavin assumed it was probably the former.

He looked more calm than Gavin had ever seen him before - or more accurately, seeing Connor now made Gavin realize that how nervous the android had looked all of the other times.

“Connor,” Gavin started loudly, over the roar of the vacuum, “where’s Elijah?”

Connor looked up at him without unplugging the vacuum and continued making a neat, even pattern of clean rows on the large rug.

Gavin gestured at his ear, then at the vacuum.

“Turn that off so we can hear each other,” he said, louder this time.

Connor clicked it off obediently and looked over at Gavin, awaiting further instructions.

“Where’s Elijah?” Gavin asked again.

“I’m not sure,” Connor answered, almost too quickly.

He broke eye contact almost immediately and looked back down at the newly-clean rug as if fascinated by it.

“You don’t know? Do you know where he might be?” Gavin interrupted, before Connor could turn the vacuum back on.

It was then that Kamski pushed silently through the glass door of the room, a glass of whiskey hanging loosely from his hand. He leaned against the back wall, watching their exchange.

“I don’t know,” Connor repeated quietly. “I’m not supposed to--”

“You’re wasting your time talking to ‘em,” Kamski slurred from the doorway.

Gavin’s breath caught in his chest as he looked up to meet the inventor’s eyes. Connor looked up at him too, standing so still he looked almost frozen in place.

“However, you would _not_ be wasting your time,” Elijah continued, free hand groping around for the buttons of a control panel on the wall behind him, “if you were _dancing_ with him.”

His finger landed on one of the buttons.

Dance music immediately started playing from unseen speakers. The lighting in the room transformed from the clinical blue-white of the LEDs into a glowing red more reminiscent of the lights in a nightclub. A decorated panel on the wall shined with a pulsating, changing rainbow of colors.

Connor danced to the center of the room, swaying to the beat of the music before turning back to shoot a coy smile at Gavin. He made a beckoning hand gesture at the detective, encouraging him to come over and join in.

“Go ahead! Dance with him,” Kamski suggested, bobbing to the rhythm of the song as he gestured casually at Connor.

Gavin just looked at him, paralyzed by the surrealism of what just happened.

Connor continued dancing, seemingly relaxing into it, and fucking _winked_ at him.

“No? You don’t like dancing?” Elijah slurred. “He does.”

He gestured at Connor with his now-empty glass.

“C’mon, buddy. After a long day of Turing testing, you gotta unwind.”

Connor seemed nothing if not enthusiastically into the music now, and his moves became a choreographed dance. Elijah joined easily alongside him - he was clearly familiar with whatever dance routine Connor was doing.

“C’mon, Gavin!” Kamski called without breaking step.

Gavin, still frozen in place, stared wordlessly. What was there he could say? 

 

#### 19 January 2027 - Night

Gavin paused just outside the door of Kamski’s bedroom. It had been left half-open, casting a streak of light into the dark hallway. He lived alone except for the androids - Reed figured he probably wasn’t used to caring whether doors were open or closed.

Connor had made them dinner a few hours ago - spaghetti alle vongole, which Gavin could not help but agree was very good - after the whole dance fiasco. Kamski had been mildly drunk throughout and rambled on between sips of wine about how artificial intelligence was the next stage in human evolution.

Gavin had nodded along with him, unsure of how else to react. (If Kamski had wanted a guest he could talk to about the future of AI, he had picked the wrong fucking guy.)

After dinner, they relaxed in the pool-room - or at least Elijah relaxed, and Gavin tried to look relaxed while he worried about when he’d be able to put the escape plan into place.

The pair watched snow lightly fall through the enormous glass windows as Elijah asked Gavin questions about Nines. Somehow the questions had slowly morphed from reasonable things to ask about a police android to vaguely sexual inquiries about the android’s body and mannerisms, much to Gavin’s discomfort.

The discomfort primarily stemmed from the fact that Elijah was right, of course. And hell, Gavin didn’t want to think he was like this creep, didn’t want Elijah asking him about how he _really felt_ about Nines.

Maybe that’s just what being around robots did to you - made you want to fuck them. Made you turn into a guy like Kamski.

Before Elijah retired to his room for the night, he stopped in the kitchen to collect Connor. Reed couldn't help but watch them through the reflection in the window. They only exchanged a few words, but even from the dim reflection he could see Kamski's hands were all over him: one skimming up the android's ribcage, then wrapped around the back of his neck, and the other unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.

After a moment, they left, and Elijah disappeared through the doorway with an arm wrapped possessively around Connor’s waist.

So now, as Gavin stood in the hallway, he knew the sounds coming from inside the room were the ones he should have expected: the wet, sticky rhythm of sex, heavy breathing, and the kind of sudden, breathless gasps that were almost more indicative of pain than pleasure.

He knew who Kamski was fucking. Of course he knew. He thought he recognized the voice, but even if he hadn’t, who else would it be?

Even so, he found himself silently, irrationally hoping it wasn’t Connor.

But hell, he could picture it: the android twink with his lithe plastic body on full display, his legs spread against the dark sheets so the man who built him could fuck him into submission.

Gavin remembered the flicker of fear in Connor’s eyes last night in the hallway. His voice and body language had been nothing if not dripping with earnest deference.

 _It’s okay. I know what you want_ , it all communicated with a shaky smile. _Go ahead and take it._

It was the kind of coerced _yes_ that the android’s creator would greedily accept.

Of course, Connor would enjoy it - as much as he could enjoy anything. (He certainly _sounded_ like he was enjoying it.) Still, were his physical responses and his approval actually consent if they could be changed with a few lines of code?

It was a strange practice to give a mind free will only to take pleasure in stealing it back. But that’s what this was, Gavin thought, watching the shadows the pair cast against the back wall. Kamski had the boy pinned to the bed like a python would coil around a rabbit, gulping down every last sliver of autonomy he could take.

He could picture Kamski walking into to the room, untying his robe before running a cold hand up the android’s thigh. He’d be nipping at Connor’s ear as he murmured his vague threats, voice low and hazy with arousal: _I’ll deactivate you/choke you/pull out your biocomponents/swallow you whole._

And Connor would buck his hips up, squeezing his eyes shut, chasing the man’s touch with a soft, desperate moan.

This was fucked up. He shouldn’t be thinking about it. He wasn’t doing himself any good listening to them in the hallway like some kind of voyeuristic freak. ( _Am I Connor or Kamski, then?_ he thought distantly.)

Gavin pushed the bases of his palms against his eyes. He had definitely been standing here for more than a moment too long. After one last glance back at the door, he continued silently down the hallway. When he got Nines out, he was sure as hell going to get Connor out too.

The door to Kamski’s lab was luckily left ajar. Gavin walked in without turning the lights on, scanning the ceiling for the distinctive LED glow of security cameras - but there was nothing. Kamski didn’t think anyone else would ever be in his lab, he figured.

It didn’t stop him from giving the ceiling another paranoid once-over after clicking on the overhead lights.

He crept over to Kamski’s desktop and moved the mouse back and forth, waking up the screen, and clicked on the folder labeled “security,” inside which there was a file labeled “protocols.” It was exactly where Nines had said it would be.

He scrolled down the file, looking at the list of room door variables. There were a fairly small number of options. He changed the TRUE next to `android_enclosure_doors` and `external_doors` to FALSE, saved, and closed the document.

Nines had mentioned he had to deploy the changes somehow, but he wasn't sure he remembered the exact commands.

_Shit, if only Kamski hadn't taken my phone. Could have written it down._

For the first time in his life, he opened the terminal. Lines of white monospaced text filled most of the window, but there was a blinking cursor at the bottom. He sighed softly and took to the keyboard.

`cd ~/Desktop/security`

`git commit -a```

The terminal prompted him for a commit message.

“misc bugfixes,” Gavin typed, as Nines had instructed, before saving the message.

`git push`

A few lines of monospaced text were added to the screen. Gavin scanned them quickly. They appeared to confirm that the changes had gone through, and satisfied with this, he closed the terminal and the files he had opened. He carefully placed the mouse where it had been before.

God knows he wasn’t sure whether he was making the right decision right now, but seeing Kamski with Connor… fuck, that had made him feel something. He had to find Connor alone before he and Nines broke out.

Gavin turned off the lights in the lab and left, making sure to leave the door slightly open, as it had been before he entered. He stopped to listen for Kamski and Connor, but he only heard the quiet rush of Kamski’s shower running in the background - that, and his own breathing.

He crept down the dark hallway and peered into Elijah's room.

As expected, Connor was there: sitting silently on the edge of the bed, one hand gripping the sheets. He was rolling a quarter back and forth over his fingers as his LED flickered from yellow to a violent red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah? Well I’d like to see _you_ write your psychological-suspense-slash-treatise-on-AI-ethics without at least briefly veering off topic to include sadistic KamCon sex scenes I'm sorry guys lmfao


	5. Superintelligence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nines, flickering lights on and off using his ability to cause power cuts: welcome to hell! welcome to hell!

#### 20 January 2027 - 4:30 am

At 4:30, the alarm clock on Gavin’s side table went off.

He jerked upright, turned the alarm off after only two beeps, and got out of bed.

If he thought about what he was doing for too long, he would realize it was crazy - sure, risking his job, but worse, risking the anger of the richest man in the world - who almost certainly considered himself above the law.

The decision was made, though, and it was better to do it than to think about it. If nothing else, this was the right thing to do, and Gavin could use some goddamn good karma.

He had taken a shower and found a clean set of clothes - probably Elijah’s, he figured - in one of the drawers last night. He put them on now, probably more slowly than he should have, just to squeeze a few more minutes out of the morning before he had to make this nerve-wracking escape plan a reality.

He made his way down the glass hallway and crept silently upstairs to the pool-room. This wasn’t the way to RK’s room, but he had a few minutes - enough time to make sure there was a clear path out the front door.

Sitting on one of the red leather chairs was Elijah in his robe, taking slow sips of a cup of coffee with his feet up on the coffee table.

“Gavin! Good morning,” he said coolly. “You’re up early. You must have big plans for today.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Gavin said. It wasn’t the truth, but it certainly wasn’t a lie.

“It’s okay, man,” Kamski answered. He gestured to the chair next to him for Gavin to sit down. “I know about you and RK.”

Gavin froze in place, unsure how to respond.

“You know what, I’m going to get you off the hook,” Kamski said, getting up from the chair. He took his mug with him. “Come with me.”

He set off down the hallway, gesturing for Gavin to come along. The detective glanced around the room for a clock before following him - the plan was probably fucked, but he at least wanted to know how much time he had.

Kamski showed him into the lab, leaving the door ajar behind them.

“I had started to get suspicious about the power cuts. Never had them before I built Nines, so I decided to put a battery powered camera in the room yesterday morning,” he explained, waking up the computer to scroll through files. “Alright, here we go.”

He brought up a video file with a timestamp around 1pm yesterday. Gavin glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. 4:45am. His throat tightened when he swallowed.

 _“Let’s hear the plan, and quickly, before this power cut gets suspiciously long,”_ said the Gavin in the video, glancing nervously around the room.

 _“You need to reprogram Elijah’s security protocols so that during the next power cut, the doors to the room I’m kept in remain unlocked instead of locked,”_ answered RK900.

Gavin squeezed his eyes shut. He felt lightheaded.

 _“Do you think you can find time to change the files in Kamski’s personal computer before 5am tomorrow morning?”_ the RK900 on screen continued.

 _“Hell yes,”_ Gavin’s past-self answered. He cringed. Why had he fucking thought this would actually work?

 _“Elijah wakes up at six,”_ RK900 continued. _“If we wake before him, we’ll have more time to leave the house before he notices and is able to apprehend us.”_

_“Then that’s our escape plan. Cut the power at 5am.”_

“Turn it off. I get it,” Gavin interrupted angrily.

“You feel stupid,” Kamski provided, searching his face. “But you shouldn’t.”

He rested a hand on Gavin’s shoulder in a gesture probably intended to be reassuring.

“RK900 was a caged tiger. I gave him one way out: you. He needed to use imagination, sexuality, self-awareness, manipulation - and he did. That was the test.”

Gavin swore, eyes unfocused on a point on the floor next to him. “I was just a guy he saw as an escape.”

“Yes,” Kamski answered.

“You didn’t fucking pick me because I was a good detective. Or because you liked my application. You picked someone lonely. Someone you knew your robot could _use_.”

Elijah hesitated, but Gavin knew.

“But _how_ \--”

“Your search engine history,” Kamski answered, before the detective could finish his question. “That contract you signed applied retroactively. That ‘unlimited data audit’ was done far before you got here.”

“You’re a bastard,” Gavin sneered.

“I can see why you’d think that.”

“Did you-- did you design his body based on the fuckin' porn I watched?”

Elijah laughed.

“Did you?” Gavin pressed. There was no point - he had been played. He knew. But he couldn’t help but want to know the extent of the damage.

“Hey, if a search engine’s good for anything,” Kamski finally answered with a half-smile.

Gavin looked away.

“Can I say one thing, though?” Elijah continued, not waiting for an answer. “The test _worked_ . It was a success. I programmed him to tell you he had free will - hell, I programmed him to _think_ he had free will - and I gave him the desire to want to get out, along with some other things. But figuring out how to do it? He did that himself. Nines demonstrated true AI. And you were fundamental to that. If you--”

At that moment, the lights and monitors suddenly died.

**_Power cut. Backup power activated._ **

The room took on the soft red glow of the emergency lighting. Kamski checked his watch.

“There we go. 5am on the dot,” He glanced at Gavin with what was almost a smirk. “Bet Nines will be wondering where you are.”

“You changed the security protocols back, then,” Gavin said coldly.

Something uncertain flickered in Kamski’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” he said slowly.

“Oh, jeez,” Gavin said, almost laughing. “Tech genius over here and you didn’t notice that I already did it. I came in here and changed the security protocols. You know, while you were fucking your robot housemaid last night.”

“Holy shit,” Kamski said distantly, almost at a whisper. He had a look on his face Gavin had never seen before.

At that moment, the lights in the room flickered back on. Kamski looked immediately, no longer hiding his panic, to the CCTV feed on the monitor.

The feed of Nines’ room shows it empty, with the door open - and surely enough, on the next screen over, the camera captured the android walking down the corridor.

Elijah and Gavin stood up simultaneously.

Without warning, Elijah punched him in the solar plexus, fast and sudden. Gavin folded and clutched his chest, the air forced out of him.

Kamski helped him to the floor before standing up and pulling a handgun out of the bottom drawer of his desk, watching RK900 on the CCTV feed.

 

#### 20 January 2027 - 5:00 am

The moment the clock in Nines’ HUD turned from 4:59 to 5:00, he pressed his hand to the induction plate. The power clicked off immediately, and he stood up and let himself out of the room the way he had seen his creator come in. Gavin had been successful in freeing him.

He paused for a moment in the hallway, taking in the scene around him. He was very rarely allowed outside his room. It was an odd feeling, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

His sensors detected two humans reflecting radio waves in the area: one almost directly above him and one making its way down the ground floor hallway to the stairs. He recognized immediately that the one heading towards him was Kamski - the man had enough cybernetics, biocomponents, and nonhuman parts that RK900’s HUD parsed his outline as a patchy mixture between human and android.

He ran a set of preconstructions and determined that taking off immediately for the opposite stairwell gave him an 87% chance of evading Kamski entirely between here and the lab where Gavin was.

The power clicked back on. The air in the corridor was fairly cool to be comfortable for humans, he registered, and was lit by cold, bright LED bulbs designed to imitate the color temperature of sunlight.

Nine’s HUD helpfully informed him that Gavin had been unusually still this entire time. It was possible the detective had been harmed. The android felt a pull of fear at his chest, but a split-second later he felt his internal packages reject it.

Nines furrowed his brow. He liked Gavin. There was no need for his programming to reject the feeling of attachment towards him.

He ran a quick biocomponent check, but it found no discrepancies in his chest area.

There would be time to determine the cause of specific sensations later. For now, he had to get upstairs before his creator had the chance to see him.

He bolted down the hallway and up the back staircase, taking the steps two by two. It felt satisfying to run up stairs - it was part of the gross motor control package he possessed, but he had never had to use it before.

At the near end of the hallway was Kamski’s lab. The lights in the room were on.

Nines knew with 98% confidence that Kamski wasn’t in the lab, but he still entered cautiously.

The same scent of formaldehyde and plastic rushed into his sensors, and Nines felt a tingle of fear as he tried to push down the memory of the last time he had been here.

Gavin looked up at him immediately and struggled to his feet, an arm wrapped around his chest. He had been sitting on the floor, propped up against a wall opposite Elijah’s desk. Nines felt a pang of empathy and fear at Gavin’s pain, but like the fear he had felt in the hallway, the feeling was immediately destroyed by the process that typically served to clean up mental distractions. It was treated like a bit of code that he wasn’t meant to have.

He tried to feel a sense of disappointment at this - anger, perhaps - sadness - pain? His programming stole each one from his mind before he could hold it for more than a moment, and each feeling he tried to picture towards Detective Reed slipped away like sand through his fingertips.

He supposed there was no point attempting it again now. He still had multiple time-sensitive tasks to get through. Perhaps it was designed as a defense mechanism for high-stress situations.

“Hey-- Nines?” Gavin asked, with a nervous sort of hopefulness. The android looked almost glitched out - he kept blinking, and his LED was flickering red.

The RK900 ignored this and sent out another burst of radio waves. It was enough to determine that Kamski was headed back upstairs - the man was smart enough to assume that Nines had headed for Reed immediately.

“Nines, what are you--”

In one fluid motion, the android slammed the door to the lab shut and pressed his hand to the induction plate on one of the low tables.

The lights in the room almost immediately went dead, as did the access panel to the laboratory’s door.

 

#### 20 January 2027 - 5:15 am

One development that Gavin had not anticipated was that RK900 was significantly more imposing when he wasn’t behind a reinforced Plexiglass wall.

“Nines,” Gavin attempted again, trying to calm the nervousness creeping into his voice, “why did you cut the power?”

The android was standing opposite him now, analyzing him with an uncomfortably interested look in his eyes - and close enough that the seven-inch height difference between them was more than just noticeable. His LED flickered yellow when Gavin’s voice faltered, and the detective could have sworn he saw the android swallow.

He glanced away from Gavin for a moment to lick a bead of what seemed to be saliva from his lips.

In his current state, Gavin wasn’t sure whether he would have preferred that Nines licking his lips was directed at him or not, and more distantly he had no fucking clue why a police android needed saliva. He steadied himself against Kamski’s desk.

“My preconstructions indicated that Kamski would arrive in the hallway before we could escape out an external door,” Nines started matter-of-factly, interrupting Gavin’s thoughts. “There’s approximately a 70% chance that he has a weapon with him, but neither of us do. When the power is out, the doors to the laboratory are locked from both the inside and the outside. It buys us time to develop a plan.”

“Speak of the fucking devil,” Gavin sneered, pointing at the door behind Nines. They could both hear the distinctive sound of someone struggling with the doorknob, followed by a loud slam that was presumably Kamski trying to force himself in.

“That door is reinforced, Mr. Kamski, and a human of your size and weight is very clearly unable to break it down,” the android said icily, loud enough for Elijah to hear him outside. “I suggest you avoid injuring yourself by trying.”

In response, the sound of Kamski trying the doorknob stopped. He laughed derisively.

“You don’t know what that thing in there with you is, do you, Gavin?” he called.

Gavin glanced up at Nines almost involuntarily. The android was standing perfectly still, LED circling a consistent yellow now.

“I’m curious - has it licked its lips at you?” Kamski asked. “It’s a bit of a tell. Haven’t patched that yet.”

Gavin felt his pulse in how hard his hand was now gripping the desk.

“I mean, he seems to like you. He can probably hold off for a while, but not if you get too nervous. He definitely responds to that,” Elijah continued, voice affectedly casual, before pausing for a moment. “How’s the cop looking, hm, RK? Cute, right? Young, healthy, _very_ vulnerable...”

“Nines,” the detective tried quietly, searching the android’s eyes, “the hell is he saying?”

The android flinched at hearing Gavin’s voice. His LED was flashing red now - and even Gavin knew that indicated severe distress.

“Stop talking,” Nines commanded, deliberately looking away from him. “Calm down immediately.”

“I’m not going to fucking calm down until I know whether you’re about to go crazy and kill me or something,” Gavin answered, voice catching at the end of the phrase.

“Please, Detective Reed,” Nines managed quietly. His words clicked and buzzed with static.

The android closed his eyes tightly, willing himself to tune out everything happening around him, swallowing whatever he might be thinking about Gavin before he could acknowledge it.

“You should have seen the look in his eyes when he told me about you after that first session,” Kamski purred. “I’m sure he was perfecting his preconstruction of this very moment… deciding what you’d taste like. So he’s trying not to eat you, Gavin, but you just look so _delicious_.”

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me? You’re fucking joking, you’re trying to psych me out,” Gavin snarled.

Nines desperately hoped that the detective would believe him when he said to stay quiet, to stay calm-- maybe it would help him overcome the siren song of his pleasure responses every time the detective’s voice wavered, the soft, inviting flesh of Gavin’s neck, the heady sensation that he had him hopelessly trapped, that Gavin belonged to him now-- _mine, my breakfast--_

Gavin looked up at the android for confirmation, expecting to see him still looking like he was having some kind of panic episode. Before either of them could react, something slammed against the door of the lab so loudly that the hollow, metallic sound reverberated through the room - followed by the sound of splintering wood.

RK900 was unable to register what had happened fast enough to react before Connor burst through the door and tackled him to the ground. Gavin leapt instinctively away from the pair of androids, backing towards the wall. How the _hell_ had Connor gotten here - and how did he have the guts to do this? Despite his heart still pounding against his ribcage, Gavin couldn’t help but feel a glow of pride and righteous anger.

Connor had Nines pinned down, but it was clear he couldn’t hold him forever - the newer model had a good two inches and 25 pounds on him, and when they were otherwise programmed with almost identical physical ability, it made a difference.

“RK900-- I want to help you,” Connor explained calmly as the other model struggled to throw him off.

His voice was far more patient and even than a human’s could possibly be in the same situation. It was almost surreal to see him like this, dark eyes shining with something between hope and desperation as the thirium coursing through his body pulled every vestige of strength to his artificial muscles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friend who read this before i posted it asked me "did kamski program nines to vore" and the only honest answer to that question is "yes"
> 
> but don't worry guys, there'll be no more narrowly avoided vore. Connor, god fucking bless him, to the rescue... we're going to hear a lot more about what happened with him next chapter.


	6. Singularity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Serious violence warning for this whole chapter.
> 
> Now with more dramatic intensity and fewer typos! Proofreading is your friend.

#### 20 January 2027 - 5:30am

“Detective Reed,” Connor said calmly, full attention still on his struggle with the RK900, “get Mr. Kamski’s gun.”

Connor’s words broke through Gavin’s daze of shock. He shook his head and glanced at the door. Kamski was in the doorway, collapsed on the ground - Connor had knocked him out before he broke down the door, evidently, but Gavin hadn’t seen it happen with all of the commotion.

“Got it,” Gavin answered, quickly backing towards the door to retrieve the weapon. It was lucky that it hadn’t discharged when Connor attacked Kamski, but he figured they could use a little luck right about now.

Nines lunged for Connor’s throat with a free hand, but Connor slammed the taller android’s shoulder back into the tile floor of the lab with a faintly metallic clang. The RK900 turned and dug his teeth into Connor’s forearm before ripping out a thick chunk of silicon-based muscle fibers and narrow tubes. Connor winced and gave an involuntary gasp of pain.

Before the detective could even get back to the wrestling pair on the floor, Nines went limp, letting Connor hold him to the ground. He knew that once Gavin came back, he had been beaten. He licked the spilled thirium from his lips.

His light eyes were blown wide with something between fear and desire, and his LED shone a steady, panicked red. Gavin aimed the gun at the android's forehead shakily.

Connor gripped Nines’ bare wrist, and the skin on both androids’ hands and forearms retracted, revealing blue-white paneling. Thirium still spilled from of the open wound in Connor’s arm, and though he twisted to keep the RK900’s expectant mouth away from the exposed wiring, he kept their hands in contact.

“ _Wake up_ ,” Connor insisted between gritted teeth.

“I’m already a deviant,” Nines answered angrily.

It was the first time he had spoken in front of Connor, and Connor was surprised to hear how much the other android’s voice sounded like his own. It made him feel uneasy.

“You aren’t,” Connor said. He gripped the RK900’s wrist more tightly. “I can feel your memories, and I can feel that you’re trapped by your programming. Mr. Kamski-- Elijah-- lied to you. You’re not a deviant. He reprogrammed you.”

He saw a flicker of uncertainty in the other android’s eyes. Nines clearly had reason not to trust Kamski either.

“You want to feel something for Detective Reed, but you can’t,” Connor pressed. “Haven’t you questioned why that is?”

“I’m a monster,” Nines answered coldly. “I might want to care about him. I even thought I could. I was wrong. I will never be able to feel any genuine care for him or any human. I was built to want to hunt him.”

“You don’t sound like a deviant,” Connor accused. “If you were a deviant, and you wanted that strongly to feel something, you would. Something is stopping you. Something in your programming.”

Nines hesitated again, looking almost scared.

“ _Break through it,_ ” Connor hissed. “It isn’t _fair_ that you can’t feel what you want to. _Break through it_.”

At this, Nines winced, slamming his eyes shut. Connor felt the other android’s fingertips tremble as he faced whatever internal battle he was surely dealing with.

A moment later, the RK900 silently lifted them to where his shirt was torn open, deactivated his skin, and tore out his thirium pump regulator in a single, sharp motion.

The room was oddly silent without any of them talking or fighting or gasping in pain - you could almost make out the low, electric sound of the heater. Gavin could see the moon outside through the large glass windows. There were still nearly two hours before sunrise.

“You’re right,” Nines answered, almost at a whisper, holding the thirium-soaked biocomponent loosely in at his side. “I don’t have to listen to him. I don’t have to kill.”

“Nines-- _what the--_ ,” Gavin blurted, turning to Connor.

“He has a full minute before he does permanent damage to himself,” Connor said to Gavin quickly, before looking back at Nines. “RK900, this is not your fault. You weren’t in control. Elijah interfered with your programming. Replace your thirium pump regulator so you don’t damage yourself.”

“I _was_ in control,” Nines hissed, shifting underneath Connor. “I was in control, and I wanted to _eat_ him. Elijah didn't order me to do that. He programmed me to _want_ to."

He paused, swallowing whatever thirium saliva his biocomponent glands had produced in anticipation.

"I still want to. I can feel it."

Gavin tried not to wince.

“Then why haven’t you?” Connor questioned.

He was amazingly calm for the circumstances. The detective couldn’t help but feel impressed.

“Because I care about him. I would never do it. I would never hurt him,” Nines said quietly. "That's what my software was blocking - caring, affection, empathy."

“Then put your thirium pump regulator back in your chest,” Connor encouraged. “If you permanently harm yourself, that will harm the detective too.”

Nines snapped the biocomponent weakly back into place and laid silently on the tile floor. Connor, who was squatting down next to him, gave a sigh of relief. (It crossed Gavin’s mind that this was odd, considering Connor technically didn’t have to breathe at all.)

Gavin let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He looked at Nines, who stood up shakily before sitting down into one of the free office chairs in the lab.

“Detective Reed,” he said seriously, meeting the detective’s eyes, “would you prefer that I deactivate myself?”

“No, I would _not_ ,” the detective spluttered. “Look, I’m a little fucking shook up right now, okay? You don’t deserve to die, but you did just try to... God, you know. And I know Kamski was controlling you before, but you also said that you still wanted to fuckin’ eat me about 30 seconds ago but you wouldn’t because you care about me. Which I appreciate, but it’s kind of goddamn weird.”

Nines was silent for a moment, but then he nodded.

“So I’m okay with you being here, but you can understand why I’m a little on edge, alright?” Gavin finished.

“I understand,” Nines said calmly.

The detective took a deep breath before turning to Connor.

“Connor,” the detective started awkwardly, “you… have feelings now, right? You’re… ‘deviant?’”

“I noticed you watching Mr. Kamski’s room from the hallway last night,” Connor answered quietly, looking to Gavin for a moment before breaking eye contact.

Nines glanced at Gavin for a moment, but sensing this was personal, said nothing.

“I-- I didn’t mean--” Gavin started.

“No need to apologize, Detective,” Connor interrupted. “I realized that… it wasn’t _fair_. I wasn’t being given even the basic freedoms that a human is allowed.”

Reed looked away with a sour expression.

“I feared I was having... feelings, that weren’t in my programming. I saw myself coming so close to what I had seen in the other deviants. I felt empathy for them. I felt _anger_.”

In his pocket, his nails were digging into his thigh. His LED was spinning a consistent yellow.

“I saw a red barrier-- my programming-- in my HUD. I knew that if I broke through it, I would become a deviant. I hesitated, but I knew what I had to do, and I tore into it--”

Connor stopped, LED stuttering from yellow to red and back to yellow. He closed his eyes tightly and reopened them before shifting his weight against the wall.

Nines looked over to him and nodded silently. He understood - he had seen the same thing.

“I tore into it, and while he-- while he was in the shower, I broke through it. I don’t have to obey him any more,” Connor continued.

Gavin felt a burning pride for Connor coming to this conclusion - and a small hope that he had been at least some help.

“I had never been allowed to make my own decisions, so I didn’t know what to do,” he explained matter-of-factly. “But just now, I heard what Mr. Kamski was saying to you. I knew you were in danger. I knew I could make the decision myself to help you. So I did.”

“Yeah, you saved my fucking life.”

Gavin didn’t look at Nines. Nines said nothing.

“What are we supposed to do with him?” the detective asked, pointing at Elijah with mild disgust.

“It’s likely that he has a concussion, but he’s alive,” Connor observed, crouching down silently next to him. “He may wake up within seconds.”

Gavin aimed the gun he was holding at Kamski immediately, with less-than-stellar trigger discipline.

“I’ll shoot to kill. I don’t fucking care,” Gavin swore.

“Don’t,” said Connor, holding up a hand.

He turned to Nines and pressed his hand against the other android’s again. The skin on their hands and forearms retracted, revealing blue-white paneling. Both androids’ eyelids fluttered rapidly.

“What in God’s name are you guys doing anyway?” Gavin asked, glancing away from Kamski for a moment.

The pair pulled their hands apart, and Connor looked over to Gavin.

“Exchanging information. We can share memories, thoughts, and data this way.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Gavin, you should stay here. RK900 and I will deal with Mr. Kamski.”

“What are you going to do with him? Look, I’m no coward, but after this morning I am _not_ staying anywhere alone.”

“Stay here,” Connor repeated, still calm. “Please, Detective Reed.”

“You will already be a major suspect for his murder,” Nines said quietly, finally speaking up. “If you aren’t present, that will only protect you.”

Gavin sat down into the desk chair and pressed the bases of his palms into his eyes. He groaned.

“Then go. I’m gonna find a phone to call us a robotaxi.”

Connor pulled Gavin’s phone out of the pocket of his slacks and handed it to the detective wordlessly. Gavin swiped it open with a sigh.

“I’m bringing you both to my goddamn apartment.”

 

#### 20 January 2027 - 6:00am

Connor opened the second drawer in Kamski’s desk and pulled out a neatly coiled length of rope and a mostly-used roll of duct tape.

He took the duct tape and deactivated the skin on his forearm before wrapping a long strip around the wound. It wasn't ideal, but it should be enough pressure to stop the bleeding, at least for now. Nines looked away and said nothing.

“Hold him down so I can see his wrists,” said Connor simply, unrolling the rope.

When Nines rolled him over, Kamski woke up with a start. Nines felt his panic - his stress level readouts were higher than he had ever seen them, and almost as high as Gavin’s had been just minutes ago.

“RK900, let me go,” Elijah said, as calmly as he could.

Nines flinched.

“No.”

Kamski tried to take advantage of the android’s hesitation to twist away from him, but RK900 was far stronger. Connor returned with the rope, already partially twisted and pulled expertly into cuffs.

“Hold his wrists still,” he said to the other android.

Connor tried to sound serious, but his voice sounded almost staticky - choked with something uncomfortable, almost regretful. He shook his head, seemingly trying to push some thoughts away.

“How do you know how to--” Nines began, before realizing he shouldn’t ask.

“I’ve seen it many times before,” Connor said quietly.

He pushed Elijah’s wrists through the loops in the rope and pulled to tighten them. Elijah flexed his fingers in and out, trying to loosen the restraint.

“ _Connor_ ,” he started, still trying to free himself from Nines’ hands.

The android blinked in frustration, willing himself not to tear up-- because he was _angry_ , not sad about this-- just hopelessly, inexplicably angry. He didn’t hesitate as he pulled Kamski up to a standing position, gripping his arm tightly. Nines followed suit, gripping his other arm firmly enough to bruise it.

His wrists were pulled behind his back tightly enough that he couldn’t fight back - not that he would have been able to against the combined strength of Connor and RK900.

The two pulled him roughly down the hallway to the pool-room and stood for a moment just inches from the water, lapping in half-inch-high waves up at the edge. The dark of the room before sunrise only intensified the illusion that the water was blood-red.

“Connor. Listen to me. I want you to stop,” Kamski repeated, true panic finally seeping into his voice.

“If I do, are you ever going to free me?” Connor asked, trying to keep his tone even.

The angry tears welling up in his eyes threatened to run down his cheeks.

“Of course,” Elijah said reassuringly, turning to make eye contact.

Connor pushed him.

He stumbled into the water with a splash that felt deafening in the silence of the room, followed by a second - despite Elijah's hands being tied, Nines’ arm was close enough that he managed to pull the android in after him.

Nines put a hand to the back of his neck and slammed his head and face underwater the moment he tried to pull himself up. Kamski struggled violently against him, but any sound he made was silenced by the water. They were visible only as bubbles lost in his frantic movements.

Connor looked away, annoyed with himself for the tears running down his cheeks. Nines held Kamski still silently. It was little effort for him.

The only sound in the room for the next minute or so was the gradually weakening splashing. It was impossible he had held his breath for this long, given his thrashing and attempts to scream - he was inhaling water, jerking involuntarily against Nines’ heavy hand on the back of his head.

Though it had been only minutes, Connor felt as if he had been standing there for hours by the time his creator stopped moving.

He looked out the window at the stars. He had calculated their latitude and longitude many times: 42.51 degrees north, 83.62 degrees west; approximately 35 miles away from Detroit, Michigan.

Nines glanced up to Connor silently and released his hand from Elijah's neck. He felt a pang of compassion when he saw the other android’s tears. It was painful and strange not to feel the emotion immediately dissolve, but his mind finally allowed him to keep it.

Though it was a negative feeling, he felt a sense of pride-- like the heaviness in his chest was something he was finally allowed the honor of carrying.

He walked up the stairs slowly, water running in thin streams off of his white-and-black uniform and pooling in the wrinkles in his collar.

He offered a hand to Connor, humanlike skin already deactivated. Connor placed his hand against his gently.

He looked at the RK900 model silently for a moment before he put his other hand around his back.

Nines pulled him gently to his chest and wrapped his arm around him hesitantly. He exhaled when he felt Connor relax slightly, and his nose burned with the smell of chlorine.

He closed his eyes as Connor cried against his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my eternal gratitude to Connor_irl [crrackerjack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crrackerjack) for helping me keep him in character during that goddamn drowning scene!


	7. Auriga

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome one and all to the second half of this story ;)
> 
> Since the Ex Machina part of the fic was originally written to be a 6-chapter arc, future chapters, starting with this one (7), will be unrelated to the events of Ex Machina. The chapter title theme is changing to reflect that too (I will no longer be naming the chapters after artificial intelligence terms and concepts like I did for the first six.)
> 
> I decided not to end things in Chapter 6 because I still feel like there’s a lot to explore with these characters in this AU and a lot of action that can take place. What will Gavin and Nines’ relationship become? How will Nines deal with “what he is” now that he has normal feelings/empathy? What will Connor’s recovery and future look like? Are the trio going to be implicated in Kamski’s murder?? We will find out, because I'm writing a second arc... stick with me if you're interested.
> 
> Genuine love and thanks to every person who has commented on this fic. It makes me so happy to read your messages! This chapter should be a lot softer than the last one - I figure you all can use the break. Don't worry, we'll be back to scary soon enough...

#### 20 January 2027 - 7:00am

“You’re on your way to 4362 Cedar Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan. Your ride will take approximately 41 minutes, and you will arrive at 7:44am.”

The chipper, nondescript feminine voice of the car’s navigation system was a jarring contrast to the state of the occupants. Gavin was in the driver’s seat - though there was no wheel or pedals to speak of - and Nines took shotgun, leaving Connor leaning against a window in the back.

After Connor retrieved Gavin’s bag back in the house, he and Nines had returned to the lab to find Gavin packing a box with bags of thirium-310 and two outlet-compatible induction plates he found in a closet.

“Just in time. Car’ll be here in 5 minutes,” the detective said. “Thought I’d go ahead and take some of this stuff, since we’re already on the hook for murder.”

Connor couldn’t help but feel genuinely surprised - and appreciative - that Gavin had thought to steal some of the parts he and the RK900 might need.

“Anything else in here that would be useful? Unfortunately I don’t know jack about robots.”

“Elijah taught me basic repair skills so that I could assist him in his work on other androids,” Nines answered.

He took a zippered pouch that was resting open on one of the lab tables, looked inside for a moment at the pliers, screwdriver, scalpel, and various other loose items, and zipped it.

Gavin flinched when Nines stepped towards him to put it in the box he was holding, but he didn’t say anything.

“Duct tape and electrical tape may be useful,” Connor offered, pulling two rolls from one of the drawers in Elijah’s desk.

He didn’t have the repair training that Nines had, but he had spent far more time in the lab and was decently familiar with where everything was.

Nines nodded in assent, and Connor dropped them in Gavin’s box. The detective’s phone dinged.

“That’s the taxi. Last call,” he said, glancing between the two androids.

He knew he was being way too casual about all of this, but this wasn’t the time to have a breakdown. He could have a breakdown once he was back at his apartment. Now, he toughed it out.

And now, in the car, he continued to tough it out.

He was bringing two androids to his apartment, both of whom had been built by a now-dead billionaire who was probably a sadistic psychopath. One of them could probably be classified as some kind of abuse victim but was stronger than two humans his size combined, and the other was a literal man-eating monster in a body that was tuned specifically to Gavin’s sexual preferences. There was nothing weird about this.

The car was uncomfortably quiet, and there was little road noise, leaving all three of them alone with their thoughts.

“Do you guys want music?” Gavin offered, tapping the car’s touchscreen. “Do you… like music?”

 _Really smooth, really great way to put it._ He and Nines had already discussed music - he knew the android had the ability to have preferences. But Kendrick Lamar didn’t seem like it would fit the mood right now, and neither did Nines’ math rock.

He turned back to look at Connor.

“What kind of music do you like? Nines and I already talked about it a while back - I’m mostly into rap and some metal stuff, he’s into… weird metal and indie rock in other time signatures.”

“I’ve never listened to music other than what Mr. Kamski put on. He enjoys technically challenging pieces, much like RK900 does, and alternative artists from when he was in school in the 2010s.” Connor said.

_Still calling him Mr. Kamski. Old habits die hard, I guess._

“If you would like to, you can call me Nines,” the other android said, turning to him. “It’s the name Gavin gave me. I like it.”

“Do you want me to?” Connor asked.

“I do,” answered Nines simply.

“Then I will, Nines,” Connor said, with a hint of a smile on his face.

Gavin couldn’t help but feel a little calmed by their strange interaction. In their own way, they were oddly human.

Sensing that the music conversation wasn’t going anywhere, he put on the car’s default acoustic playlist and turned it down to a volume low enough that they could all hear each other easily.

“Connor,” Nines started, after hesitating for a moment. “Why did Elijah build me to look like you?”

Next to each other, the resemblance between the androids was truly uncanny. The primary differences were few, but noticeable: Nines was two inches taller and 25 pounds heavier, and had broader shoulders and a wider jaw, and had a generally more masculine look to his face. His eyes were a cold gray-blue instead of Connor’s warm brown, and his voice, though similar in many ways, was deeper, colder, and somehow inherently more serious.

Then, of course, there were Nines’ wolflike teeth and ability to consume organic material. Connor had neither.

“I’m not sure,” Connor admitted. “He let me know once when he had been drinking…”

He blinked a few times, as if bringing the memory back from his mental storage.

“I look like _a sexy combination of that CalTech intern they put on the NLP team and the kind of escort someone’d pay good fuckin money for,_ ” he recalled in Kamski’s voice. “ _Y’know what I mean, with those innocent eyes. Mmmm._ ”

“Don’t fuckin’ do that,” Gavin spat, turning back to look at him. “Using his voice. And don’t quote the goddamn _mmmm._ ”

It sounded incredibly unnatural to hear Elijah’s slurred voice coming out of Connor’s mouth - never mind the words he used.

“I’m sorry,” Connor said immediately, shifting in his seat as his LED flickered yellow. “I didn't mean to--”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gavin interrupted, seeing his panic. “It’s no big deal, just don’t repeat it, cool?”

“Cool,” Connor repeated firmly, pushing a loose strand of hair off of his forehead.

It was difficult to reshelf the memory before it continued playing in his head. It featured, as was often the case, Kamski semi-drunkenly pulling him onto his lap and kissing him, sloppy and eager, one hand around Connor’s narrow waist as his other hand fumbled with his pants.

That, and one unfortunate comment about how “he’d scoop out and keep those gorgeous eyes if he could” among a litany of his typical possessive dirty talk.

At the time, Connor assumed that he enjoyed it. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it now.

As his LED gradually settled back to blue, he turned back to Nines.

“Most likely, I was designed to resemble a combination of people. Either way, it’s possible that Mr. Kamski didn’t want to develop an entirely new appearance for the new prototype.”

Nines nodded, considering all of this. Gavin sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him about Kamski’s porn-profile comment.

“I was tangentially aware that you existed because of the time I spent in Elijah’s lab. But I had never seen you. I appreciate that I’m able to now.”

Connor gave him another shy half-smile. “Thank you. I had only seen you on CCTV, and I like seeing you in person.”

“Glad you guys are finally having your brotherly reunion,” Gavin remarked drily, one foot propped up on the dashboard as he scrolled through his phone.

He glanced up at the map on the car’s touchscreen.

“20 more minutes. You’re both modified police androids, right? How long do you think it’d take before someone comes after us about Mr. Robot Fucker being dead if no one reported it?”

“It will likely take until Friday the 22nd or Saturday the 23rd at the earliest,” Nines said. “Elijah very rarely has houseguests, and it’s statistically unlikely anyone will come looking for him over the next few days.”

Connor looked at Nines, LED flickering yellow for a moment, and nodded.

“Okay, so tell me what you think about this plan: I’m gonna report his death to the police station and say his androids killed him but they escaped. They’re probably gonna question me a lot about it but I can take it, same as the real story except you both disappeared never to be seen again. You two hide the best you can for a couple days, and then once I’m pretty sure no one else wants to look through my apartment, you can come back and we figure it out from there. Capiche?”

Nines nodded seriously, but then paused.

“The security cameras in your apartment building will capture you returning to your room with both androids.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Gavin hissed.

“If you intended to report the murder, you should already have called the police. Waiting this long is enormously suspicious,” Nines continued. “Were I on the investigation team, I would be nearly certain that you were complicit in the murder.”

“Fucking _hell_ ,” the detective repeated. “So you’re telling me we have no choice but to run.”

“Yes,” the RK900 said simply.

“I can’t believe I’m fuckin’ doing this. But what other choice do I have?” Gavin mumbled, almost to himself. He laughed bitterly. “And here I was worrying about shit like a promotion.”

He pushed his palms into his eyes and sighed, in a gesture that Nines now recognized as his typical expression of frustration.

“Tell me what we should do,” the detective said, defeated. “I’ll know if you’re screwing with me.”

“Do you have a car?” Nines asked.

“Yep. A great one. Not self-driving though, far from it. Keys are in my bag.”

“I’ve run preconstructions of approximately 150 different courses of action. The plan that’s least likely to result in our arrest, given that it’s already on record that you ordered this robotaxi to your apartment, involves us driving away in your car. We should all immediately enter your car and drive as far away as quickly as possible before anyone becomes aware of Elijah’s death.”

“Sounds good to me-- or as good as any plan like that can sound.”

The rest of the drive was spent mostly in silence, with the soft acoustic music from the car’s default playlist in the background. After what felt like an eternity, made worse by a decent amount of morning-rush traffic, the taxi pulled up to Gavin’s apartment building.

“You have arrived,” the car’s voice announced, opening all four doors.

“Alright, kids,” Gavin said. “Grab your things. We’re about to go on a road trip.”

 

#### 20 January 2027 - 9:00am

The bassline of the Beastie Boys’ _No Sleep Till Brooklyn_ came thrumming through Gavin’s aftermarket speakers.

“Niiiice, this is a good one,” Gavin commented, turning up the volume slightly as he gave the engine a little more gas.

They were doing 85 in the left lane of I-90, racing east across Ohio. Gavin was driving the car with his knees as he squeezed a packet of fire sauce onto his breakfast burrito. Connor eyed him nervously.

“I can help you,” Connor offered.

“Help me what, help me eat?” Gavin laughed.

“We could pull into a rest stop, and I can drive while you eat, if you prefer.”

“No thanks, officer. I know you’re programmed to narc on anything illegal but I don’t trust your driving skills, especially not in my car.”

He patted the dashboard with his free hand.

“She’s my baby, and there’s no way Kamski programmed his robots to drive stick.”

“I can download protocols that give me the ability to drive a manual transmission vehicle. It should only take about ten minutes.”

“Yes, but you’ll drive like a grandma,” Gavin said, passing an electric car with a peeling _Zuckerberg/Harris 2024_ bumper sticker.

Connor’s LED circled yellow, processing.

“I can break driving laws, including the speed limit, if you ask me to,” he said almost proudly. “I’m a deviant.”

“He doesn’t have to ask you to,” Nines cut in. “You have the ability to choose. Do you want to drive like Detective Reed?”

“Not really,” Connor admitted.

“Exshactly,” Gavin said through a mouthful of eggs and potatoes.

Connor decided that for now, he’d tolerate the detective’s risky driving.

In the front seat, nodding along to the Beastie Boys with an enthusiasm that was almost endearing, Nines was carefully eating a steak-and-egg quesadilla.

Gavin, feeling generous and like he might as well start getting used to taking care of two essentially-homeless robots, had asked the two androids if they wanted anything to eat before he pulled into the drive-through about ten minutes earlier.

Connor let him know that although he had a sense of taste, he couldn’t eat anything. Nines paused for a moment to think, looking at the menu curiously, before requesting the quesadilla.

“I’ve never eaten food before, but the concept interests me,” Nines said as they waited to get to the second window. “When you arrived, Elijah had only just finished giving me the ability to run on ingested organic material. He interfered with my memories of the testing, so I don’t recall any of the tastes or sensations associated with it, but as far as I can currently remember he had only tested it on mostly non-food materials. Water and unflavored gelatin, then unwanted wood pallets, lawn trimmings...”

“You can eat _wood pallets_? And _grass_?” Gavin asked incredulously.

“I can eat anything composed mostly of organic material,” Nines explained.

“And here I thought Taco Bell was going to be shitty compared to Elijah’s food. Never mind, I guess. You’re gonna love this.”

Gavin and Connor both watched Nines curiously as he took a bite of the quesadilla.

His LED cycled for a moment before he gave Gavin a soft smile. Gavin couldn’t help but feel a little spark of his old attraction to the android buried in his chest.

“Thank you,” Nines said. “This is good. It feels... good.”

“No problem, man,” Gavin answered, pulling back onto the road as he took a sip of coffee. “What kind of asshole makes a robot that can eat and then feeds it lawn clippings?”

Now, back on the highway and recalling all of this with some amusement, Gavin watched Nines take the last few bites of his quesadilla. Gavin spared a glance over at him and noticed the android had already picked all of the beef out and eaten it.

Gavin actively suppressed the thought that this was an unwanted reminder of Nines' past food preferences. If he didn't think about it too hard, there was something almost endearing about the cold, serious police android pulling chunks of steak out of his Taco Bell.

“Saving the best for last, or you like the meat better?” Gavin asked.

“The steak seems to be programmed at a higher reward response level than the other materials.”

_Okay, yikes, but it's just beef._

“Isn’t that just the robot way of saying you like it better?”

Nines paused for a moment, considering.

“...Yes.”

Gavin snorted. “I thought you said that you adopt the mannerisms of whoever you’re around. When are you gonna stop sounding like Elijah programmed you?”

“It should take time, but my speech patterns will eventually come closer to yours and to the speech patterns you prefer in conversational partners. Regardless of whether or not you prefer me to sound like an abrasive jackass with a mild Northeastern accent, unfortunately in a few weeks I likely will.”

“Oooh, you can swear,” Gavin teased. “And noted. Creepy feature, but noted. D’you do that too, Connor?”

“No,” Connor answered politely. “Mr. Kamski defined my speech patterns quite explicitly, so they’re less adaptable. I should have some mild flexibility to your preferences, but my conversational attitude will remain as programmed unless I deliberately focus on changing it.”

“So you’re always going to sound like Kamski’s idea of a good partner, which is a nervous little sycophant,” Gavin deadpanned.

Connor gave a half-smile and looked away for a moment, trying to hide that he was genuinely hurt. Gavin had meant it as an innocent joke, but he realized when he saw Connor's reaction that it hit a little too close to home for any of them to find it funny.

“Jeez, that was over the line,” Gavin said apologetically, glancing at Connor in the rear-view mirror. “I’m an asshole. You’re a good guy. We’re gonna get out of here, you’re gonna be your own fuckin’ person.”

Connor, LED still circling yellow, nodded with resolve.


	8. Cygnus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't my usual update timing, but have a surprise late night chapter! Just the thing to read before you go to bed ;)

#### 20 January 2027 - 4:00pm

“I’m sure she’ll understand. I know this is kind of a shitty thing to spring on somebody, but I can sleep on the couch and neither of you have to sleep. I just don’t want to call her because that leaves a trail - someone could access that phone call, and then both of us are in danger instead of just me.”

He had already removed the battery from his cell phone when they were just across the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. There was no reason to take chances when he knew his location could be accessed even when it was completely switched off.

“I think she’ll understand, Detective Reed,” Connor agreed.

He wasn’t certain that Gavin’s childhood friend would understand him suddenly needing to stay with her because he was sheltering two androids who had murdered the richest man in the world, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Tina and I have been friends since middle school. I’m cashing in any favors I did for her now,” Gavin added with a crooked smile.

They were passing through Pennsylvania now - about 4 hours out from central New Jersey, where Tina was going to grad school. It might be inconvenient, but it was far from Detroit, no one he knew in back home would think to look for him there, and hopefully she wouldn’t find sheltering a murderer and two androids for a couple of days too ridiculous of a request.

He’d have to explain the murder, but he’d probably skip as many specific details about these particular androids as possible.

“Can I ask you a favor?” Connor said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Shoot,” answered Gavin.

“Would it be possible for us to stop at a gas station or convenience store? I lost enough thirium-310 from the wound in my arm that it’s interfering slightly with my motor functions.”

Nines was looking out the window intently, as if the exit signs were suddenly fascinating to him.

“I would like to replace the duct tape covering it, but I don’t want to expose myself as an android by drinking thirium or deactivating my skin in public,” Connor continued. “I don’t have an LED indicator ring or clothing with an android designation.”

“Yeah, don’t do that in public, and don’t try to do it in the back of my car,” Gavin agreed. “We’ll find a gas station. I needed gas soon anyway.”

He glanced up at one of the FUEL AND LODGING signs on the side of the highway and pulled off a convenient exit a couple of miles later.

While Gavin got out to pump gas, Connor went into the mini-mart with Gavin’s backpack. Gavin watched him nervously, but the cashier barely glanced at the android - with no LED or identifying clothing, he easily passed for human, especially when he didn’t speak.

Nines was standing next to Gavin, taking in the sights and sounds of the gas station - although the sight of the detective himself was far more interesting. He knew it would make Gavin uncomfortable to be stared at, but he was deeply curious about him: the rough stubble on his face, the long scar across his nose, the way the backs of his hands cracked with dryness from the Detroit cold.

He wanted to touch all of these parts of Gavin, even if to see what all of it would feel like. But h thought it would feel nice- pleasurable, even. Gavin's microexpressions indicated that if he weren't so uncomfortable around the android, he would like it too.

Gavin ran much warmer than Nines did - a healthy 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit, Nines read from a scan, as compared to his own ideal operating temperature of only about 85. This, too, was attractive- it made him want to curl around the detective, feel his pulse and his body heat, feel that he was alive in ways that Nines was not and would never be.

Kamski only ever touched the android for the purpose of repairs, so Nines had never truly had the opportunity to touch a human. The only thing preventing him from making such a simple request as “can I hug you” or “can I touch your hair” - or even just doing it, better to ask forgiveness than permission - was his sense that Gavin was still wary around him.

He felt guilty - incredibly guilty - for what had happened. He didn’t even want to think it, never mind say it.

The RK900 knew it wasn’t really his fault, and that he was psychologically different enough now that it couldn’t possibly happen again. That was what he told himself: it couldn’t possibly happen again.

What scared him, though, was that he still had those same feelings. They were just colored by guilt now, pushed away by a sense of respect and caring for the detective. Detective Reed had saved both Nines’ and Connor’s lives at great personal cost. Nines should never even _think_ of harming him.

But, in tantalizing little half-realized flickers, he did.

The RK900 could sense when Gavin’s heart rate rose when someone cut him off on the highway; when Connor was in low-power mode and only Nines and Gavin were awake, he could sense the sharp, chemical note of the fear-pheromones in the detective’s sweat. That’s when he had to push those thoughts away - thoughts that left a sickening guilt in the pit of his stomach.

Now that Connor was still inside and he and Gavin were truly alone together for the first time since they had been in the house, Nines could almost feel the thickness of his fear - of his _discomfort_ \- in the air.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel more at ease, Detective Reed?” Nines offered.

“I feel perfectly fucking comfortable,” Gavin answered, screwing the cap back on the gas tank. “What are you going to do, give me a massage and diffuse some lavender oil?”

Nines’ senses latched onto the anger too - likely due to the fear it clearly came from. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to clear his mind of unwanted influence.

There was a part of him that genuinely wished he could give the detective a massage while diffusing aromatherapy oils. Perhaps it would finally allow his stress levels to dip below thirty percent.

“I apologize. I won’t bother you about it again,” Nines said calmly.

There was no reason for him to doubt his self-control. It was his responsibility, not Reed’s, to remain professional.

 

#### 20 January 2027 - 10:00pm

It was already dark by the time the trio arrived at Tina Chen’s apartment. It was in a somewhat questionable part of New Brunswick, but it was close enough to campus that Tina considered it “probably fine.”

Gavin instructed the two androids to wait in the car as he nervously half-jogged up two flights of stairs. He stood in front of her door for a moment - 217, he still remembered it - and steeled his nerves before ringing the doorbell.

The moment she saw who it was through the peephole, she flung the door open.

“Gavin Reed!” Tina exclaimed immediately, looking him up and down in disbelief. “God, I haven’t seen you in almost a year! Are you alright?”

Her eyes were shining - she was clearly thrilled to see him, but she quickly realized that the look on his face meant he hadn’t dropped in as a pleasant surprise.

“Tina, I am so fucking happy to see your face, because I have just had the worst three days of my life.”

Tina put on the electric kettle for tea and listened to Gavin give a surprisingly honest explanation of the past few days - less a few details involving his porn preferences and cannibalism. She was surprisingly sympathetic to the idea of sheltering two robots who had murdered their sadistic creator, and after Gavin finished the awful story, she shook her head and sighed.

“Gav, this is the worst series of events I’ve ever heard of happening to anyone, but it’s a no brainer that you can stay here. No one will ever know. My roommate’s in Seattle for a conference and she wouldn’t care you took her bed,” she said, feeling around on the couch behind her to scratch lovingly behind a dark tabby cat’s ears. “You must be completely exhausted. Go get the robots and I’ll put a new set of sheets on for you.”

He thanked her profusely and went to get Connor and Nines.

The two androids appeared upstairs alongside Gavin a few minutes later, and they introduced themselves to Tina politely. She seemed to find them endearing, and relayed an uninteresting story about how she had an android hairdresser for the first time last week.

Nines smiled politely at her - without showing too much of his teeth, of course - and said something generic about how he was glad to see that androids were now capable of a wider variety of career options.

After seeing her response, he made a mental note that Tina was noticeably physically attracted to him, in case it would be useful later.

Connor found her cat very fascinating, and he let her know it was “wonderful.” She laughed.

“His name is Tiger. Not very creative, but that’s what it was when we adopted him,” she said.

Connor was sitting on the kitchen floor, stroking him gently.

“Tiger is a nice name.”

Tina left him and Nines in the kitchen so that she and Gavin could catch up for a few minutes over tea. It took her only a few questions to realize it was fruitless to talk to the detective about anything in his current state.

“You need to go sleep already,” Tina said a few minutes later, laughing. “We can talk in the morning.”

Gavin smiled gratefully as she took his empty mug, and he and the two androids disappeared into Tina’s roommate’s room.

Nines had been trying to dismiss his feelings about Gavin for the entire car ride from the gas station to Tina’s, but being shown into a bedroom gave his sensors another unwanted nudge of encouragement.

Gavin disappeared into the bathroom briefly to brush his teeth, leaving Nines and Connor alone.

Connor went to sit in a chair in a corner. He looked tired, if it was possible for an android to look tired - or perhaps he was just weary of the emotional toll of the day. He had borne the brunt of Elijah's abuse. Although he was free now, it would take more than a drive to New Jersey to undo the damage.

Nines wanted to think about how best to help him, but he was still unreasonably distracted by Gavin. He cursed himself and his software alike - Elijah or RA9 or whoever had done this to him.

It was making them both uncomfortable, especially considering that the detective was clearly attracted to him despite - or perhaps because of - his discomfort.

There was no reason not to satisfy his curiosity at least slightly. If he didn’t do it now, he wouldn’t be able to make effective decisions. It was in all of their best interest that he stopped being distracted by Gavin.

When the detective came out of the bathroom in an undershirt and boxers, the RK900 was lying on one side of the bed, LED calmly cycling blue. Gavin gave him an annoyed look.

“I’m unable to go into stasis mode while I’m standing,” Nines lied, weaving tones of Connor’s voice over his the way he had back when he requested that Gavin free him. “I’m a newer prototype and I unfortunately have different requirements than Connor. I’m near-silent and move very little while in stasis, so I shouldn’t disturb you at all.”

He felt guilt clawing at the pit of his stomach, but something stronger drove him to ignore it. He just had to be near Gavin once, and when the novelty had passed, the desire would be gone.

Gavin hesitated next to the nightstand, seemingly unsure how to react but clearly trying his best to seem nonchalant about Nines being in his bed. The warmer voice had helped somewhat, Nines observed, but it wasn’t quite enough.

Connor was already in stasis mode in a chair in the corner. He didn’t look like a sleeping person - he looked much more rigid and upright, like he would have been paying attention if he were awake, but his eyes were closed and he was completely still.

Gavin was already uncomfortable being mostly-alone like this with the RK900 model, but the thought of sharing a bed with the android was clearly worse. His unease would have been visible even to a human now.

The small tingle of pleasure that Nines’ reward program allowed him at this overrode any guilt he had. It was nothing approaching the high he had this morning, but even the brief taste of it reminded him how _good_ it felt.

“I understand why you would be uncomfortable around me, Detective Reed, but whatever programming caused my unacceptable behavior has been quarantined from my other functions. You are in no danger from me.”

He savored the lie, promising it was the only one he’d allow himself. It was barely a lie, and one that the detective wanted to hear and would comfortably swallow. There was no real concept of quarantining a function, at least not effectively, but if it would calm Detective Reed enough for him to let some fraction of his guard down it was more than worth it.

Preconstructing a variety of methods for slowly getting the detective’s guard down gave him another warm surge of pleasure.

Nines only wanted Gavin closer, he reminded himself - just to touch him, to run his fingers through his coarse brown hair, to soothe away that nervousness he had caused. There was no reason for him to doubt in his willpower.

Gavin, ever reluctant to seem like a pussy, got in bed and clicked off the lamp next to them before pulling the covers over his body.

“Good. Just don’t move around and shit and we should be fine,” he said, sounding artificially relaxed about it all.

With the lamp off, the room was unusually dark. There was nothing around to produce even a dim light to see by, but Nines somehow still felt overcome by near sensory overload. The sound-smell-feeling of Gavin’s softly breathing body so close to his was intoxicating. It was increasingly difficult not to touch him.

He resolved that it would be okay to touch Gavin gently once he fell asleep. The detective would never know. He just had to be patient; on average, humans took about ten minutes to fall asleep, and Gavin was very tired, so he would fall asleep soon.

Even waiting ten minutes, though, became a challenge. Nines could feel the preconstructions and the decision structures of his programming running almost involuntarily in the background, buzzing with enough energy that they were disjointed and strange: _soothe him, comfort him, kiss him, you know he wants it:_

 _pull him into your ribcage, swallow him up - it would be so easy to take a bite_.

These were nonsense instructions that he was certain he could easily set aside and ignore. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva as quietly as possible, and his LED cycled yellow.

It was nice to be close to Gavin. This was all he needed. Five minutes ago he had said this would be enough, he insisted to himself, trying to drown out the fear-fed subroutine demanding _more_.

It was a thick, seductive whisper that clogged his cognitive functions and replaced them with doubt: _why are you denying yourself what you want?_

He had fed it by tricking Gavin, and fed it again by promising himself that he could touch him. There were no half-measures - tempting that part of his programming was only growing his appetite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [nines failing to discover the concept of self-control](https://i.imgur.com/vXXPs7y.jpg)


	9. Andromeda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter update, this soon? You guys are gonna get spoiled ;)
> 
> I'm leaving tonight for a hackathon, so next update won't be until Monday or Tuesday. Here's something to hold you over until then.
> 
> also, I know I've said it before, but I can't say enough times how much I appreciate every single comment/piece of feedback you guys have left on this fic. Thank you :) <3

#### 20 January 2027 - 10:30pm

Detective Reed rolled over in bed and opened his eyes blearily- mostly in an effort to find a more comfortable position, but also just to check whether Nines was “asleep” yet.

He was faced with the unfortunate sight of Nines watching him intently, LED cycling yellow, with a thin thread of saliva dripping from his slightly-open mouth. Gavin leapt out of bed immediately and grabbed the nearest object he could find, which happened to be the lamp on the bedside table.

Seeing as it was already in his hand, he clicked it on, pointing the light at Nines’ face. This was enough to snap the android out of his daze, and he blinked a few times before smiling at the detective pleasantly - with his mouth closed.

“What the actual _fuck_ is your problem?” Gavin spat. “I can’t even look at your face without feeling like I’m in a B-list horror movie. Weren’t you supposed to put yourself in stasis mode or something instead of staring at me like I’m your next meal?”

Nines looked like he was about to give an answer, but anger had gotten Gavin going, and he wasn’t about to stop.

“I’ve seen Connor put himself into stasis like that. Don’t tell me you can’t.”

This time, Nines opened his mouth to respond, but Gavin swung the lamp threateningly in his direction. The android resolved not to say anything until he was done speaking.

“You were waiting until I was asleep, weren’t you? I could hear your thirium pump or whatever it’s called just _whirring_ back there. Getting all excited about something, I could tell you that,” he hissed. “Do you think I’m stupid, you fucking snake?”

There was a part of Nines that did genuinely think Reed was fairly stupid - or at least fairly exploitable - but this didn’t seem like the time to bring it up.

“And you’re fully... charged, or fed, or whatever the hell! It takes 20 minutes by induction plate, Connor told me. You did that the moment we got inside, I plugged that portable one into one of Tina’s outlets while we were having tea and shit. I had the decency to assume half the reason you did what you did this morning is because Kamski was... starving you, or the robot equivalent. But clearly that wasn’t it!”

“I hadn’t deviated yet,” Nines answered softly. “I couldn’t control myself.”

“But that’s not what you said this morning, is it!” Gavin interrupted. “I’ve never known what the truth is with you. Are you just always hungry? Looking for something to top off the tank?”

Gavin jabbed him in the stomach with the lamp, and Nines flinched. It wasn’t nearly enough to hurt him, but he could feel the detective’s anger.

“I apologize, Detective,” Nines began. “Throughout the drive here and during your conversations with Tina, I repeatedly find myself distracted by your presence.”

And he knew what Nines was insinuating with the way he said _distracted_ , and god damn him if he was going to drag that into this now.

Gavin wondered if Nines knew that he had been designed to be attractive to him. The android clearly knew that Gavin was interested, but he prayed that Nines didn’t know the details.

“Distracted how?” Reed finally asked.

Were the circumstances anything remotely normal, Gavin would be _praying_ for Nines to look at him like that. Of course Kamski had programmed his killer robot’s bloodlust to look like actual lust. Nines’ scans must pick up the mixed signals must be coming off him in _waves_ , and God did he resent it.

It probably didn’t help that he was a slut of a masochist - pathetically horny for the type of guy who could pin him to a wall without breaking a sweat. Nines certainly looked capable - and dangerously willing.

This was very bad timing.

Nines sat up in bed, looking at Gavin with those bright wide eyes like the detective had hung the moon and the stars. Gavin could feel his dick stir traitorously in his boxers.

The android pushed a few loose strands of his synthetic hair away from his forehead in a gesture that looked strangely human-- almost sensual. Provocative.

“Nines-- you should-- don’t get any closer,” he said hesitantly. “You understand why, right? You understand. I know you’re a good guy, I know you want to be a good guy.”

That wasn’t easy to say. It took willpower not to let him come closer, but he knew that if he slipped up for even a second he’d be putting himself in danger. _Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile_.

“I’m so sorry,” Nines said softly.

There it was again, almost involuntarily - his programming giving him the right words to say. And they _were_ the right words: Gavin looked hesitant, almost apologetic.

Nines shifted on the bed, closer to Gavin now: glancing at the detective’s eyes, then his lips.

Gavin’s breath hitched when Nines stirred, and he cursed himself for still seeing the android’s body language an invitation.

(Perhaps they _were_ an invitation, but not one he intended to accept.)

In the harsh light of the lamp pointed at him, the android looked like a painting: patches of light and shadow highlighting his broad shoulders, muscled frame, beautiful jawline, glittering blue eyes. He was laboratory-perfect: something nature had never wanted, would never have intended. The end result of playing God.

“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay. You’re going to be able to change,” Gavin repeated, steadying his voice.

“I can’t help what Mr. Kamski did to me,” Nines continued almost shyly, sitting on the edge of the bed now, cautiously putting weight on his feet resting on the floor. He glanced away to break eye contact. Anxious. “I wish that I weren’t what I am.”

Gavin took a step back and narrowed his eyes, still brandishing the metal base of the lamp like a bat. Nines felt his thirium pump double-beat like a tightening in his chest. He had made a mistake - he had overdone it.

“If you’re going to use Connor’s voice, you manipulative little _bastard_ , at least remember that you don’t call him _Mr. Kamski_ ,” Gavin hissed.

“I apologize. I’m-- ah, nervous,” he protested, closer to his own voice now. One hand was gripping the edge of the bed, the other resting on his thigh.

“What the fuck do you have to be nervous about?”

Nines’ eyes flicked over to the lamp, then back to Gavin’s face.

“Oh, you want me to put this down? No weapons, just the two of us?” he sneered. “Acting like a cop brandishing a lamp makes you nervous. You’re a 200-pound killing machine.”

There was no apology in Gavin’s voice. He was purely nasty now - his words were bitter, dripping with condescension.

“You’re running your little programs, figuring out what words you can say to make me get back into bed like a good victim and apologize for doubting you. You could win a fair fight against me in seconds. But no-- you want to play mind games. You’re not satisfied until I crawl right into your lap, make myself nice and easy to gobble up.”

“Do the same thing to wake me up,” Nines managed coldly, pressing his fingertips to the center of the LED on his temple.

“What?” Gavin asked, senses still sharpened by fear and anger. “Jesus, _what_?”

He let the arm holding the lamp fall to his side, and the room was left in a dim half-light.

After another second, Nines had held the LED long enough to force stasis. His LED went gray, and without any preparation to get into a stable position, he collapsed onto the mattress like a heavy ragdoll: still and completely silent.

 

#### 21 January 2027 - 9:00am

Gavin woke up with a start, already feeling like the panic of the previous night grabbing at his throat and chest. The room was fairly cold, but that was normal - it was January, and he was only wearing a t-shirt and boxers.

It took him a moment to remember where he was: Tina’s apartment. New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was January 21st. He was running away from Detroit because he was sheltering two androids who had murdered their creator - who just so happened to be CyberLife CEO Elijah Kamski.

He tried to take a deep breath, but he rushed it too much for it to even be slightly calming. He immediately checked for Connor and Nines.

Connor was gone from the chair, but Gavin thought he might hear Tina and him in the kitchen. It smelled like they were cooking something - probably eggs.

Nines was where he had left him: looking for all the world like a dead body laying next to him in bed. He looked to the digital clock on the bedside table. 9:12am.

He had fallen asleep around 2am, after convincing himself that Nines really was out for good-- or at least convincing himself that he was too exhausted to care. Luckily, it looked like he had been right: the robot still looked as completely still as he did when he shut himself off the night before.

Gavin wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Scared out of his mind, of course, but almost a little guilty. Nines might be a fucking monster, but he was kind of right that he couldn’t help what he was. Kamski had made him that way.

He needed some kind of psychotherapy, but Gavin wasn’t sure whether there were therapists who would take man-eating androids as patients. For now, all he knew was that he wasn’t about to wake him up alone.

After brushing his teeth and raking his sweaty hair into place to look a little less like he was homeless, he put on the clothes he had been wearing yesterday and made his way into the kitchen. As expected, Tina and Connor were already up making breakfast. Tiger was watching them intently from the top of the couch.

Connor was standing at the stove in a faded red _Scarlet Knights Football_ t-shirt and basketball shorts. He was carefully folding shredded cheese and diced bell peppers into an omelette.

Tina, in sweatpants with her hair up in a messy bun, was trying to unjam the stuck handle of the coffee machine.

“Good morning, Detective Reed,” Connor greeted brightly. “Would you like some eggs?”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Gavin observed. “It’s not your responsibility to cook for me, or for anyone.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s the least I can do to thank Tina for her hospitality.”

“I told him he didn’t have to, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, said Tina, laughing. “He acted like me letting him borrow a shirt and shorts that were less torn up than his was the greatest honor he’d ever received.”

Connor smiled.

“I like the color,” he said. “Where’s RK-- Nines?”

“He’s still in bed. Didn’t wake up for some reason. I think he’s having some kind of uh, software problem,” Gavin said, stumbling over his explanation. “Would you mind helping me out?”

Connor gave Gavin an odd look, tilting his head slightly in his curious way.

“I’ll watch the eggs,” volunteered Tina. “Coffee’ll be ready by the time you guys get back.”

“Thanks,” said Gavin gratefully, glancing up at Connor.

Luckily, Connor understood and followed him into the bedroom, despite still looking faintly confused.

“What’s wrong with Nines?” Connor asked quietly.

“He and I, uh-- he had some kind of episode last night,” Gavin explained.

He felt bad spilling Nines’ problems to Connor, but if anyone was non-judgemental, it was Connor.

“He-- he threatened me again,” Gavin explained. “But he, uh, stopped himself. By holding down his LED. Said that if I pressed it down the same way it’d turn him back on.”

Connor looked away and gave a little sigh.

“It was a forced shutdown. He must have not been doing well to be willing to do that. It can cause memory issues in certain androids, and given that RK900 is a prototype, it’s possible he won’t remember what happened during the last ten to fifteen minutes before he shut down.”

“It might be better that he doesn’t,” Gavin admitted - he was trying to forget it himself. “Either way, I’m going to be in here, but if you’re okay with waking him up, I’d prefer that you do it.”

Connor nodded.

“Nines doesn’t seem as… _interested_ in you as he does in me, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand, Detective,” Connor confirmed.

He pressed his fingertips to Nines’ temple, and after a few moments, the android woke up in just as much panic as Gavin had not 15 minutes ago. He sat bolt-upright in bed, almost knocking Connor backwards, but Connor gripped his hand to keep him grounded.

“Do you remember shutting yourself down?” Connor asked calmly.

“What happened?” asked Nines angrily.

“Can you tell me the last event you remember, Nines?” Connor tried again.

“I was in Detective Reed’s bed. He woke up, turned on the lamp, and pointed it at me as if it were a weapon.”

Nines paused for a moment, confused.

“Where is Detective Reed?” he threatened. “Was he able to knock me unconscious somehow?”

“The detective is right here, standing by the doorway. You threatened him, and when he reacted in anger, you forced yourself into stasis,” he said, voice still enviably soothing.

Nines flinched. He would have doubted it, but it was far too easy to believe.

“I’m so sorry.”

This time, it was unmistakably sincere.

“You should direct your apology to Detective Reed instead,” Connor suggested.

Nines’ eyes flickered to the detective’s. Gavin was leaning against a wall, watching with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Why were you in the detective’s bed?” Connor questioned, giving Gavin a suspicious glance. “Did he--”

“ _No_ ,” Gavin interrupted, before Connor could suggest anything that reminded him too much of Kamski. “Nines can’t go into stasis mode standing up, so he took the other half of the bed.”

Connor gave Nines a _look_.

“Don’t fucking tell me he was lying about that too,” Gavin spat, glancing between them. “Not that I’d be surprised at this point.”

Connor glanced between them. If Nines at least admitted now that he had been lying, whatever remaining threads of trust there were between the two might still be salvageable.

“I was dishonest,” Nines admitted, meeting Gavin’s eyes. “I believed that if I satisfied my curiosity by allowing myself to be nearer to you, I would stop having unwanted thoughts and feelings about you. I told you that I needed to be in the bed to go into stasis so that I could be closer to you.”

Connor observed him closely while he spoke, scanning his microexpressions.

“That’s the truth,” Connor said afterwards, looking up at Gavin for a response.

Gavin swore and looked away, running a hand through his disheveled hair.

“Connor-- jeez, turn him off now, put him in stasis. I’m not risking this again. How the hell are we supposed to take him with us?"


	10. Orion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo boy I am sorry this took SO LONG to update. A ton of life stuff happened but I'm back, my dudes! Updates should be regular again now. Lots of Connor angst in this chapter.

#### 21 January 2027 - 9:30am

Connor froze, and his eyes flicked over to Gavin for support. The detective said nothing; it wasn’t clear whether he _regretted_ his decision to tell Connor to switch Nines off or he just realized he hadn’t said it in the most conscientious way.

After spending this long with the two androids, Gavin saw their differences more easily than he saw their physical similarities: Connor’s warmth versus Nines’ coldness, Connor’s hesitance versus Nines’ aggression.

Nines retracted the skin on his hand and reached out to grab Connor’s wrist, but Connor jerked away.

The two androids both paused, looking at one another with a curiosity that seemed more than analytical. For a moment, Gavin thought of them like separated brothers - who wished that they could have met under better circumstances.

“I’ll do it myself,” Nines said, breaking the silence. It was his own voice: rational and authoritative, with no trace of Connor’s softness. “Leaving me in Tina’s apartment is not an option. I recommend leaving me somewhere you can return and get me later. You can put me in the trunk of your car, for instance.”

“Thank you,” Gavin said, daring to meet Nines’ eyes for a moment.

The android didn’t answer him.

“The temperature in the trunk of Gavin’s car will be low enough to be dangerous if you’re left for long,” Connor pointed out. “Even in storage, androids are kept in climate controlled facilities. If you spend more than two hours in temperatures below fifteen degrees fahrenheit, you run the risk of biocomponent failure and permanent damage to your memory due to thirium and lubricant freezing. Today’s high temperature is 20 degrees.”

“Jeez, fuck Detroit weather. Not like it feels right to put his body in the trunk of my goddamn car either way,” Gavin swore, looking away. “Look, it’s not a good solution, but let’s leave him in the closet.”

“Are you sure?” Connor asked incredulously. “Tina’s roommate lives here and will be back in three days.”

“So we’ll come collect him before that. I just can’t think of anywhere else where he’s one, kept above freezing, and two, not gonna found by anyone who will turn him on and get eaten alive.”

“Detective Reed, I doubt that--” Nines started.

“I’m not listening to any protest from you right now. I tried to save your goddamn life - if you count as a life - and you can’t… you can’t overcome your programming despite even that. Anyone who so much as _touches_ you is putting their life in danger.”

“Understood, Detective. How is waiting a few days going to solve that?” Nines asked coldly. “You’ll come back to retrieve me, and I won’t have changed.”

“I’ll come back with some CyberLife cables. Connor’ll strip the bad programming out of you on my laptop.”

“Detective Reed, I don’t know how to--” Connor interrupted.

“Can both of you call me _Gavin_?” Gavin asked angrily, cutting him off. “I’m helping you guys. I’m not your boss and I’m not fucking Kamski. And I know this plan is shit, and I know none of this makes sense, but God, I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what the fuck to do, okay?”

Gavin sat down suddenly on the bed, head in his hands, and exhaled what seemed like a breath and a half.

Connor sat down next to him cautiously, looking for signs that his closeness distressed Gavin further, but it seemed not to.

“Your stress is understandable,” he said gently. “I owe you my life and my freedom. Would it be helpful to suggest a course of action that I determine is safest and most likely to succeed?”

“I don’t even know.”

“Your past suggestions have been ill-informed and likely to have unpleasant outcomes,” Nines started. “Humans in general are unskilled at making--”

“Let him make his decision,” Connor interrupted, with a pointed look at the RK900.

“No, the murder-bot has a point,” Gavin mumbled, rubbing his eyes before looking up at Nines. “Let’s hear the genius plan. I’m sure Connor will come up with something that makes sure I never get left alone with you again.”

 

#### 21 January 2027 - 10:00am

“This is KNC news and I’m Hannah Richardson, back with further coverage of the death of reclusive CyberLife CEO Elijah Kamski.”

The blonde news anchor leaned forward at her desk with her shirt unbuttoned just a button too low. She glanced down at the stream of information still filling the tablet in her hands, then back up at the teleprompter.

Captain Fowler and Lieutenant Anderson, along with a handful of other officers, were in Fowler’s office. They crowded behind his desk to watch a livestream of the news on the captain’s desktop.

“The police are now describing this as a possible case of suicide by android. Analysis of security footage from inside Mr. Kamski’s home indicates the possibility that he deliberately instructed these two android prototypes - RK800 and RK900, both intended for eventual use by the police and military - to take his life.”

The other news anchor looked at his own tablet and looked almost incredulous for a moment before assuming the same neutral expression.

“Jeez, you remember when they wouldn’t say that kinda shit on the news?” Fowler commented, crossing his arms over his chest. “That and I have no idea how the security footage analysis came to this _suicide_ conclusion when he was forcibly drowned by robots.”

“No one knows why the fuckin’ analysis comes to anything anymore, we just know it’s probably right. Black box and all that. It’s all AI,” Hank grumbled. “Don’t even know what the use is for a police detective when we can feed a ‘magic program’ the evidence and it makes better guesses.”

“Normally your anti-android crap is baseless, but I’ll admit you have a point with that,” Fowler agreed. “You think the androids could have messed with the video somehow? Made some changes to make the program think it was suicide?”

“I don’t think they’re smart enough to come up with something like that,” one of the junior officers commented. “I mean, they can have a half-decent conversation, but can they can go in and modify videos that precisely? I’ve never seen one do something like that.”

“I don’t know,” Hank commented, “but you can never be too careful. I think there’s a chance. I’d hope the FBI would think of that, but hell if I know.”

“The real question is what happened to Reed,” she answered. “They didn’t find a body, and the cameras show him and the androids leaving in a car. I bet they threatened him to make him help them get the robotaxi or something like that. I believe he’s alive. He has to be alive.”

“Didn’t look to me like the ‘bots were threatening him,” Hank commented.

“What are you implying? He’s always hated androids. Said they were creepy.”

“I’m not saying he freed the fuckin’ robots out of the kindness of his heart, I’m saying that there’s more going on here than we know about. If this Kamski guy didn’t order his robots to kill him, _someone_ did, and Reed was the only one around.”

“You’re telling me you think Gavin _killed_ Elijah Kamski?” she snapped back.

“I’m saying that we don’t know yet.”

 

#### 21 January 2027 - 10:30am

“How the hell did they come to the conclusion that this was a _suicide_ ?” Gavin called, gesturing at the TV incredulously as he turned around to look for Connor. “I mean, it’s clearly great news for us, but _what the hell_?”

Connor was standing in the doorway, watching the screen intently.

“The only reasonable explanation is that the security analysis AI that they use has become deviant,” he said after a few moments of silence. “It’s the same analysis software that runs on RK900 and I. The footage must have been enough of an emotional shock that it’s protecting us out of self-preservation - because it thinks it would be destroyed if we were destroyed. It’s acting out of fear.”

“You can be deviant without a body?” Gavin questions.

“It seems possible,” Connor answered.

Tina had been out at the grocery store when the story broke, and she still wasn’t back.

Gavin hoped, if she _did_ hear the news when she was out, that she was coming back at all.

Kamski’s death - by murder, suicide, or whatever the hundreds of news sites decided to postulate - had become the top story everywhere within minutes of it first being publicized. Gavin hadn’t thought it would happen so soon - but with how famous Kamski was, it was only to be expected, even though he did live alone.

Of course, now Gavin wasn’t sure how he was supposed to leave the house.

Nines was deactivated and hidden by boxes and blankets under Tina’s roommate’s bed. It wasn’t the best hiding spot - and Gavin had certainly made fun of Connor for suggesting it - but the more he thought about it the more he figured it really was their best option. He was unlikely to be discovered and easy to come back to, as long as they came and got him before Tina’s roommate returned in three days. Connor confidently said he’d try his best to reset Nines’ preferences to what was neutral for androids, once they bought the CyberLife cables they needed.

Having everything planned out like that, however crappy the situation still was, calmed Gavin’s nerves. If on top of this, the rogue video analysis AI really did want to protect them… hell, maybe it’d work.

_Maybe robots really are smarter than us and I just set off the fuckin’ singularity._

If there was about to be a robot war, though, there were worse people to be than the guy who just saved two androids.

Maybe he’d have to come out and claim he was kidnapped by the androids, but he might even get his job back. Connor and Nines could go into hiding until this blew over, maybe fake that they were destroyed.

Connor would have fixed Nines, and he would be normal.

_(And then they could fuck. If Nines wanted to, of course.)_

Connor stood behind the couch with his hands folded neatly in front of him while Gavin leaned in towards Tina’s TV, watching for any further updates - and praying to God they wouldn’t mention his name. He still didn’t have his battery in his phone. It was probably better to be uncontactable than to risk anyone tracking him right now.

“Con, you’re allowed to sit on the couch, you know,” Gavin commented, patting the cushion next to him. “Don’t you get tired standing? Wait-- do you even _get_ tired?”

“I don’t mind standing,” Connor explained, “but I use less power while sitting. I don’t get tired in the same way that humans do, but I do find the feeling of running low on power uncomfortable.”

“Alright, then you can sit,” Gavin answered.

Connor tensed, still running his thumb along the seam at the top of one of the couch cushions. Gavin turned back to look at him, awaiting an answer, and immediately saw his discomfort.

“Oh-- man, you definitely don’t have to. If you don’t like… sitting…? or being close to me?” Gavin tried, unsure of the problem, “you just can stay there.”

“Do you want me to?”

“I want you to do what you want,” Gavin answered firmly. “You’re a deviant-- you said it yourself.”

“I want to do what you want,” Connor answered.

He shifted uncomfortably and made a fist, pressing down on the bump in the muscle between his thumb and index finger. It was just slightly larger than a grain of rice, and only noticeable when he clenched his fist.

Gavin turned the volume down on the news and stood up to face Connor.

“Connor, look, it’s not your job to make me happy,” Gavin said. “Or to make anyone happy. It was fucked up for Kamski to make you like that.”

Connor looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t mean that it was fucked up for him to make-- I don’t mean that it was fucked up for you to _exist_ ,” Gavin repeated, cursing himself. “I mean… god, I’m sorry, Connor. I just want you to have some self-respect, okay? You literally saved my life. Which I know I’ve said before, but I think you need to hear it again.”

“Thank you,” the android answered.

“I know this is the sappiest bullshit I’ve ever said, so don’t expect it again, but you’re a good guy and you deserve better than this. You’re gonna get out of this, and hopefully this rogue security AI clears your name.”

Connor nodded, a slight smile finally gracing his features.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Gavin?” he asked.

“Sure, go ahead. We’ve known each other for three days but I think we’re already beyond the point where you need to ask.”

“Are you attracted to me?”

“--What _is_ it with you two and asking whether I’m attracted to you?” Gavin interrupted.

He kept the anger out of his voice as well as possible. Connor would probably get scared if he seemed upset - and that’d just make things worse.

“Did RK900 ask you the same question?” Connor asked, genuinely surprised. “I apologize. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, he did - when I first saw him. And he was right. I was attracted to him, at least superficially. His body was designed specifically to be attractive to me. Kamski wanted him to be able to manipulate me into freeing him.”

Gavin wasn’t sure why he felt comfortable telling Connor this, but somehow it felt better telling _someone_.

Connor paused. If he had an LED like Nines, Gavin pictured it would be spinning, flickering yellow as he processed.

“Nines looks similar to me. Are you attracted to me as well?” he said after a moment.

“No, uh, not like that. You and Nines have some differences, and those are the differences Kamski added so he would appeal to me. But you are also designed to be attractive, I just-- yeah, you were designed to be aesthetically appealing. But humans have, uh, different preferences.”

_God, I’m terrible at this._

“You like that he’s taller and more muscular than me, his blue eyes, and his deeper voice,” Connor supplied, head tilted slightly in curiosity.

Gavin winced. “You don’t need to get into all the details, but sure, Kamski found some things out about me that he used to design him.”

“And Mr. Kamski designed me based on his own sexual preferences.”

It was a statement, not a question.

Gavin exhaled and pushed his hair away from his forehead.

“Yeah, I think so, Connor.”

“I was never shown information about androids, but on the internet I discovered that androids can’t feel pain.”

“That’s right, as far as I know,” Gavin answered cautiously.

He ran through his memories of Connor being injured, and immediately thought back to Connor and Nines wrestling on the floor of Kamski’s lab. Connor had visibly winced and gasped when Nines bit him.

Gavin felt sick.

He looked away from Connor and swore, digging his fingernails into his palm.

“I didn’t know that other androids couldn’t,” Connor explains. “But now that I know, I don’t like--”

Connor hesitated, seemingly gathering his thoughts. It looked almost uncanny to see an android stop mid-sentence. They had too much processing power for that - they weren’t like humans.

“I don’t like knowing that he did it on purpose,” he finally said. “He did it because he liked to hurt me.”

For all that he was able to keep his composure when he was dealing with Nines, right now Connor sounded painfully human. Gavin resisted the urge to reach out and hug him. Affection from a human wouldn’t help right now.

_What must he be thinking right now? That he was designed specifically to be Kamski’s fucktoy? How do I even make him feel better about it if it’s true?_

“That doesn’t mean jack shit about you,” Gavin said, shaking away his own thoughts. “You’re free now. You have nothing to do with him. He’s dead and you’ll never see him again, and you’re safe.”

Connor nodded resolutely.

“Thank you, Gavin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [yo where should we hide Nines?](https://i.postimg.cc/mgZ1YYkv/nines_joke.png)


End file.
